He held the little glass before my eyes (a childish verse came to my mind: “Little glass, little glass in the hand”) and I saw, though indistinctly and cloudily, the reflection of an uneasy self-tormented, inwardly labouring and seething being⁠—myself, Harry Haller. And within him again I saw the Steppenwolf, a shy, beautiful, dazed wolf with frightened eyes that smouldered now with anger, now with sadness. This shape of a wolf coursed through the other in ceaseless movement, as a tributary pours its cloudy turmoil into a river. In bitter strife, each tried to devour the other so that his shape might prevail. How unutterably sad was the look this fluid inchoate figure of the wolf threw from his beautiful shy eyes.

“There you see yourself,” Pablo remarked and put the mirror away in his pocket. I was thankful to close my eyes and take a sip of the elixir.

“And now,” said Pablo, “we have had our rest. We have had our refreshment and a little talk. If your fatigue has passed off I will conduct you to my peepshow and show you my little theatre. Will you come?”

We got up. With a smile Pablo led. He opened a door, and drew a curtain aside and we found ourselves in the horseshoe-shaped corridor of a theatre, and exactly in the middle. On either side, the curving passage led past a large number, indeed an incredible number, of narrow doors into the boxes.

“This,” explained Pablo, “is our theatre, and a jolly one it is. I hope you’ll find lots to laugh at.” He laughed aloud as he spoke, a short laugh, but it went through me like a shot. It was the same bright and peculiar laugh that I had heard before from below.

“This little theatre of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred or a thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty cabinet of pictures, my dear friend; but it would be quite useless for you to go through it as you are. You would be checked and blinded at every turn by what you are pleased