started forth into his heart and thoughts; and again that unspeakable longing, that glowing desire, laid hold of him here, which had before agitated his bosom in painful spasms of rapture.
"Ah! is it you again, my little golden Snakes? Sing now, O sing! In your song let the kind, dear, dark-blue eyes, again appear to me—Ah! are ye under the waves, then?"
So cried the Student Anselmus, and at the same time made a violent movement, as if he were for plunging from the gondola into the river.
"Is the Devil in you, sir?" exclaimed the steersman, and clutched him by the coat-breast. The girls, who were sitting by him, shrieked in terror, and fled to the other side of the gondola. Registrator Heerbrand whispered something in Conrector Paulmann's ear, to which the latter answered at considerable length, but in so low a tone, that Anselmus could distinguish nothing but the words: "Such attacks more than once?—Never heard of it." Directly after this, Conrector Paulmann also rose; and then sat down, with a certain earnest, grave, official mien, beside the Student Anselmus, taking his hand, and saying: "How are you, Herr Anselmus?" The Student Anselmus was like to lose his wits, for in his mind there was a mad contradiction, which he strove in vain to reconcile. He now saw plainly that what he had taken for the gleaming of the golden Snakes was nothing but the image of the fireworks in Anton's garden: but a feeling unexperienced till now, he himself knew not whether it was rapture or pain, cramped his breast together; and when the steersman struck through the water with his helm, so that the waves, curling as in anger, gurgled and chafed, he heard in their din a soft whispering: "Anselmus! Anselmus! seest thou not how we still skim along before thee? Sisterkin looks at thee again: believe, believe, believe in us!" And he thought he saw in the reflected light three green-glowing streaks: but then, when he gazed, full of fond sadness, into the water, to see whether these gentle eyes would not again
