or to fire off some of his stinging
sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but
blank and embarrassed faces around him--everybody thinking the man was
mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been
instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to
invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, but they had already
sufficiently sown the seeds of fresh mischief in him.

To have more money in his pockets than he just required for the
immediate wants of the moment was always fatal to him, and no less so
was the excitement attendant upon the giddy whirl of pleasure and
social popularity, or what stood for such. These were rocks of danger
upon which he always struck. The former led him to indulge in his
reprehensible habit of drinking, and the latter soon made him upset all
the systems of order and regulation. Day he turned into night and night
into day. He shunned for the most part the society of Hitzig and his
circle of friends, with their stimulating discussions that cultivated
the mind whilst unfolding and developing the feelings, and frequented a
low wine-shop and the common coarse company that was to be met with
there. Hence during nearly all the rest of his life, that is, from 1816
to 1821, he spent his mornings in the discharge of his official duties
at the Supreme Court (two mornings a week, Monday and Thursday), or in
writing; the afternoons he generally slept, or in summer took a walk;
and the evenings and nights always found him in the wine-shop of his
choice; and he never liked to leave it until morning came, nor did any
other engagements prevent him from putting in an appearance at his
habitual haunt, even though it were past midnight before he were free.
As already remarked, however, it was not to sit and drink like a sot
that he gave way to this degrading habit, but to get himself "exalted"
as he called it, and then when he was duly "exalted" came the firework
display of wit and glowing fancy, going on hour after hour without rest
or interruption for the space of five or six hours at once. If his
tongue was not the medium through which he discharged the creations of
his teeming imagination, his eagle eye was spying out all that was
ridiculous or strikingly extraordinary, or even what was possessed of a
touch of pathos or deep feeling, or he employed his hand in sketching
and drawing inimitable caricatures. He never sat idle and silent, and
drank steadi