A letter from Clara to Nathanael, explaining that Nathanael had addressed the previous letter to her instead of to Lothar.Nathanael believes that a barometer-seller who arrived recently at his rooms under the name Giuseppe Coppola is none other than the hated sandman, and he is determined to seek vengeance. His father having died of some sort of flaming explosion, the burns to his face are gone before he is laid in his coffin. A year later, another night of experiments caused his father's death in the presence of Coppelius, who then vanished without a trace. Coppelius instead twists Nathanael's hands and feet and tortures him until he passes out. He is about to throw fire embers into Nathanael's eyes when his father pleads he be permitted to keep his eyes. When Nathanael screams and is discovered, Coppelius flings him to the hearth. Coppelius begins taking 'shining masses' out of the fire and hammering them into face-like shapes without eyes. It is Coppelius, an obnoxious lawyer come to carry out alchemical experiments. He recounts that one night, he hid in his father's room to see the Sandman. Nathanael came to associate the Sandman with a mysterious nightly visitor to his father. Nathanael recalls his childhood terror of the legendary Sandman, who was said to steal the eyes of children who would not go to bed and feed them to his own children who lived in the moon. A letter from Nathanael to Lothar, the brother of his fiancée, Clara.The story is told by a narrator who claims to have known Lothar.

It was the first in an 1817 book of stories titled Die Nachtstücke ( The Night Pieces). ' The Sandman' ( German: Der Sandmann) is a short story by E. 1817 short story collection Die Nachtstücke ( The Night Pieces), Berlin

The sandman audio book