Forward
  by Mark Croft
     One very late night during a synchrotron run I read the story (that 
follows below) by Washington Irving.  I felt dissatisfied by the end of 
the story.  I have no objections to horror stories, but the premise that a 
gentile/innocent soul (the girl in the story) should be transformed 
instantly into a "fiend" at death seemed totally unacceptable to me.  I 
felt that a scenario in which the girl was left behind to fulfill a destiny 
more in line with her (prematurely cut short) life made more sense.  I 
also felt that such a connection between a man and a woman was a 
better vehicle for telling a poignant story, and that the German student's 
reaction in the story debased the potential of the story.  So motivated I 
set wrote my own ending to the story.  The original story appears below 
with a link to my own ending.


The Adventure of the German Student
By Washington Irving

     ON A stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, a 
young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old 
part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled 
through the lofty narrow streets-but I should first tell you something about 
this young German.
     Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. He had studied for 
some time at Gottingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, 
he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines, which have so 
often bewildered German students. His secluded life, his intense application, 
and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body. 
His health was impaired; his imagination diseased. He had been indulging in 
fanciful speculations on spiritual essences, until, like Swedenborg, he had an 
ideal world of his own around him. He took up a notion, I do not know from 
what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius 
or spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition. Such an idea 
working on his melancholy produced the most gloomy effects. He became 
haggard and desponding. His friends discovered the mental malady preying 
upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was 
sent, therefore to finish his studies amidst the splendors and gayeties of 
Paris.
     Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. The 
popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated 
by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood 
which followed shocked his sensitive nature, disgusted him with society and 
the world, and made him more than ever a recluse. He shut himself up in a 
solitary apartment in the Pays Latin, the quarter of students. There, in a 
gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued 
his favorite speculations. Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of 
Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards 
of dusty and obsolete works in the quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. 
He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of 
decayed literature.
     Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but 
for a time it operated merely upon his imagination. He was too shy and 
ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a 
passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often 
lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy 
would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality.
While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, a dream 
produced an extraordinary effect upon him. It was of a female face of 
transcendent beauty. So strong was the impression made, that he dreamt of it 
again and again. It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in 
fine, he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream. This 
lasted so long that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds 
of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness.
     Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, and such his situation at the time I 
mentioned. He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of 
the old and gloomy streets of the Marais, the ancient part of Paris. The loud 
claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets. He 
came to the Place de GrŠve, the square, where public executions are 
performed. The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hotel 
do Vile, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front. As 
Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrank back with horror at finding 
himself close by the guillotine. It was the height of the reign of terror, when 
this dreadful instrument of death stood over ready, and its scaffold was 
continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave. It had that 
very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood 
in grim array, amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims.
Wolfgang's heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering 
from the. horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form, cowering as it 
were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold. A succession of 
vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. It was a female figure,
dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, 
leaning forward, her face hid in her lap; and her long dishevelled tresses 
hanging to the ground, streaming with the. rain which fell in torrents. 
Wolfgang paused. There was something awful in this solitary monument of woe.
The female had the appearance of being above the common order. He knew the
times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once beui 
plllowed on down, now wandered houseless. Perhaps this was some poor 
mourner whom the dreadful axe had rendered desolate, and who sat here 
heart-broken on the strand of existence, from wbich all that was dear to her 
had been launched into eternity.
     He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy. She raised 
her head and gazed wildly at him. Wbat was his astonishment at beholding, 
by the bright glare of the lightning, the. very face which had haunted him in 
his dreams. It was pale, and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful. 
Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again 
accosted her. He spoke. something of her being exposed at such an hour of 
the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her 
friends. She. pointed to the guillotine, with a gesture of dreadful 
signification.
     "I have no friend on earth!" said she.
     "But you have a home," said Wolfgang.
     "Yes - in the grave!"
The heart of the student melted at the words.
	"If a stranger dare make an offer,'said he, "without danger of being 
misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a 
devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; 
but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be 
sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you."
There was an honest earnestness in the young man's manner that had its 
effect. His foreign accent, too, was in his favor; it showed him not to be a 
hackneyed inhabitant of Paris. Indeed, there. is an eloquence, in true 
enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. The homeless stranger confided herself 
implicitly to the protection of the student.
     He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place 
where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace. 
The storm bad abated,and the thunder rumbled at a distance. All Paris was quiet;
that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh 
strength for the next day's eruption. The student conducted his charge through 
the ancient streets of the Pays Latin, and by the. dusky walls of the Sorbonne,
to the great dingy hotel which he inhabited. The old portress who admitted them stared 
with surprise at the, unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang, with a 
female companion.
     On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the 
scantiness and indifference of his dwelling. He had but one chamber-an old-
fashioned saloon-heavily carved, and fantastically furnished with the 
remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter 
of the Luxembourg palace, which had once belonged to nobility. It was 
lumbered with books and papers and all the usual apparatus of a student, and 
his bed stood in a recess at one end.
     When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of 
contemplating the. stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her 
beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set of by a profusion of 
raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, 
with a singular expression approaching almost to wildness. As far as her 
black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her 
whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the 
simplest style. The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore, 
was a broad black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds.
The perplexity now commenced with the student how to dispose of the 
helpless being thus thrown upon his protection. He thought of abandoning 
his chamber to her, and seeking shelter for himself elsewhere. Still he was so 
fascinated by her charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts 
and senses, that he could not tear himself from her presence. Her manner, 
too, was singular and she spoke no more of the guillotine Her grief had 
abated. The attentions of the student had first won her confidence, and then, 
apparently, her heart. She was evidently an enthusiast like himself, and 
enthusiasts soon understand each other.
     In the infatuation of the moment, Wolfgang avowed his passion for her. 
He told her the story of his mysterious dream, and how she had possessed 
his heart before he had even seen her. She was strangely affected by his 
recital, acknowledged to have felt an impulse towards him equally 
unaccountable. It was the time for wild theory and wild actions. Old 
prejudices and superstitions were done away; everything was under the sway of the 
"Goddess of Reason."
      Among other rubbish of the old times, the. forms and ceremonies of 
marriage began to be considered superfluous bonds for honorable minds. 
Social compacts were the vogue. Wolfgang was too much of a theorist not 
to be tainted by the liberal doctrines of the day.
     "Why should we separate?" said he: "our hearts are united; in the eye of 
reason. and honor we are as one. What need Is there of sordid forms to bind 
high souls together?"
     The stranger listened with emotion: she had evidently received 
illumination at the same school.
     "You have no home nor family," continued he; "let me be everything to 
you, or rather let us be everything to one another. If form is necessary, 
form shall be observed-there Is my hand. I pledge myself to you 
forever."
     "Forever?" said the stranger, solemnly.
     'Forever!" repeated Wolfgang.
The stranger clasped the hand extended to her: 'Then I am yours," 
murmured she, and sank upon his bosom.
     The. next morning the. student left his bride sleeping, and sallied forth 
at an early hour to seek more spacious apartments suitable to the. 
change in his situation. When he returned, he found the. stranger lying 
with her head hanging over the bed, and one arm thrown over it. He 
spoke to her, but received no reply. He advanced to awaken her from 
her uneasy posture. On taking her hand, it was cold-there was no 
pulsation-her face, was pallid and ghastly. In a word, she was a 
corpse.
     Horrified and frantic, he alarmed the house. A scene of confusion 
ensued. The police. was summoned. As the officer of police entered the 
room, he started back on beholdling the corpse.
     "Great heaven!" cried he, "how did this woman come here?"
     "Do you know anything about her?' said Wolfgang eagerly.
     "Do I?" exclaimed, the officer: "she was guillotined yesterday."
     He stepped forward; undid the black collar round the neck of the 
corpse ,and the head rolled onto the floor!
 Click here to read an alternate ending by Mark Croft.> 
	The student burst into a, frenzy, "The. fiend! the. fiend has
gained possession of me!" shrieked he; "I am lost forever."
They tried to soothe him, but in vain. He was possessed with the frightful 
belief that an evil spirit bad reanimated the dead body to ensnare him. He 
went distracted, and died in a mad-house.
	Here the old gentleman with the haunted head finished his 
narrative.
     "And this is really a fact?" said the. inquisitive gentleman.
     "A fact not to he doubted," replied the other. "I had it from the best 
authority. The student told it me himself. I saw him in a mad-house in Paris.