All the strange things he had seen were clean gone from his memory; he simply recollected having babbled all manner of foolish stuff beneath the elder-tree. This was the more shocking to him, as he entertained from of old an inward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan that chatters out of them, said his Rector; and Anselmus shared honestly his belief. To be regarded as a Candidatus Theologiae, overtaken with drink on Ascension-day! The thought was intolerable.
He was just about turning up the Poplar Alley, by the Kosel Garden, when a voice behind him called out: "Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus! for the love of Heaven, whither are you running in such haste?" The student paused, as if rooted to the ground; for he was convinced that now some new mischance would befall him. The voice rose again: "Herr Anselmus, come back, then; we are waiting for you here at the water!" And now the student perceived that it was his friend Conrector Paulmann's voice; he went back to the Elbe, and found the Conrector, with his two daughters, as well as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the point of stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paulmann invited the student to go with them across the Elbe, and then to pass the evening at his house in the Pirna suburb. The student Anselmus very gladly accepted this proposal, thinking thereby to escape the malignant destiny which had ruled over him all day.
Now, as they were crossing the river, it chanced that, on the farther bank, near the Anton Garden, fireworks were just going off. Sputtering and hissing, the rockets went aloft, and their blazing stars flew to pieces in the air, scattering a thousand vague shoots and flashes round them. The student Anselmus was sitting by the steersman, sunk in deep thought; but when he noticed in the water the reflection of these darting and wavering sparks and flames, he felt as if it was the little golden snakes that were sporting in the flood. All the strange things he had seen at the elder-tree again 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-tail. 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, but in so low a tone that Anselmus could distinguish nothing but the words: "Such attacks—never noticed them before?" 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 distraction, which he strove in vain to soothe. He now saw plainly that what he had taken for the gleaming of the golden snakes was nothing but the reflection 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 look up to him, he perceived too well that the shine proceeded only from the windows in the neighboring houses. He was sitting mute in his place, and inwardly battling with himself, when Conrector Paulman repeated, with still greater emphasis: "How are you, Herr Anselmus?"
With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied: "Ah! Herr Conrector, if you knew what strange things I have been dreaming, quite awake, with open eyes, just now, under an elder-tree at the wall of Linke's garden, you would not take it amiss of me that I am a little absent, or so."
"Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus!" interrupted Conrector Paulmann, "I have always taken you for a solid young man; but to dream, to dream with your eyes wide open, and then, all at once, to start up for leaping into the water! This, begging your pardon, is what only fools or madmen could do."
The student Anselmus was deeply affected at his friend's hard saying; then Veronica, Paulmann's eldest daughter, a most pretty blooming girl of sixteen, addressed her father: "But, dear father, something singular must have befallen Herr Anselmus; and perhaps he only thinks he was awake, while he may really have been asleep, and so all manner of wild stuff has come into his head and is still lying in his thoughts."
"And, dearest Mademoiselle! Worthy Conrector!" interrupted Registrator Heerbrand, "may one not, even when awake, sometimes sink into a sort of dreaming state? I myself have had such fits. One afternoon, for instance, during coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in the very moment of corporeal and spiritual digestion, the place where a lost document was lying occurred to me, as if by inspiration; and last night, no further gone, there came glorious large Latin WRIT tripping out before my open eyes, in the very same way."