Adelung said to me one day at Petersburg—“Have you read Peter Schlemihl?”—“No.”—“If you read it, you will translate it.”—I have translated it.

The story is a moral one. I leave its development to my readers. It would be little flattering to them to suspect they required my assistance, in order to discover the obvious lessons it conveys.

I have not scrupled to introduce a few verbal alterations; but the deviations from the original are very trifling.

The Translator.