The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume V Part 40

"Look you, Amice!" said Conrector Paulmann, holding up his watch, which pointed to half-past twelve.

The student Anselmus saw clearly that he was much too late for Archivarius Lindhorst; and he complied with the Corrector's wishes the more readily as he might now hope to look at Veronica the whole day long, to obtain many a stolen glance and little squeeze of the hand, nay, even to succeed in conquering a kiss--so high had the student Anselmus' desires now mounted; he felt more and more contented in soul, the more fully he convinced himself that he should soon be delivered from all the fantastic imaginations, which really might have made a sheer idiot of him.

Registrator Heerbrand came, as he had promised, after dinner; and coffee being over, and the dusk come on, the Registrator, his face puckering up to a smile and gaily rubbing his hands, signified that he had something about him which, if mingled and reduced to form, as it were paged and t.i.tled, by Veronica's fair hands, might be pleasant to them all, on this October evening.

"Come out, then, with this mysterious substance which you carry with, you, most valued Registrator," cried Conrector Paulmann. Then Registrator Heerbrand shoved his hand into his deep pocket, and at three journeys brought out a bottle of arrack, some citrons, and a quant.i.ty of sugar. Before half an hour had pa.s.sed, a savory bowl of punch was smoking on Paulmann's table. Veronica served the beverage; and ere long there was plenty of gay, good-natured chat among the friends. But the student Anselmus, as the spirit of the punch mounted into his head, felt all the images of those wondrous things, which for some time he had experienced, again coming through his mind. He saw the Archivarius in his damask nightgown, which glittered like phosphorus; he saw the azure room, the golden palm-trees; nay, it now seemed to him as if he must still believe in Serpentina; there was a fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. Veronica handed him a gla.s.s of punch; and in taking it, he gently touched her hand.

"Serpentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself. He sank into deep dreams; but Registrator Heerbrand cried quite aloud: "A strange old gentleman, whom n.o.body can fathom, he is and will be, this Archivarius Lindhorst. Well, long life to him! Your gla.s.s, Herr Anselmus!"

Then the student Anselmus awoke from his dreams, and said, as he touched gla.s.ses with Registrator Heerbrand "That proceeds, respected Herr Registrator, from the circ.u.mstance that Archivarius Lindhorst is in reality a Salamander, who wasted in his fury the Spirit-prince Phosphorus' garden, because the green Snake had flown away from him."

"How? What?" inquired Conrector Paulmann.

"Yes," continued the student Anselmus; "and for this reason he is now forced to be a Royal Archivarius, and to keep house here in Dresden with his three daughters, who, after all, are nothing more than little gold-green Snakes, that bask in elder-bushes, and traitorously sing, and seduce away young people, like so many sirens."

"Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!" cried Conrector Paulmann, "is there a crack in your brain? In Heaven's name, what monstrous stuff is this you are babbling?"

"He is right," interrupted Registrator Heerbrand; "that fellow, that Archivarius, is a cursed Salamander, and strikes you fiery snips from his fingers, which burn holes in your surtout like red-hot tinder. Ay, ay, thou art in the right, brotherkin Anselmus; and whoever says No, is saying No to me!" And at these words Registrator Heerbrand struck the table with his fist, till the gla.s.ses rattled.

"Registrator! Are you crazy?" cried the angry Conrector. "Herr Studiosus, Herr Studiosus! What is this you are about again?"

"Ah!" said the student, "you too are nothing but a bird, a screech-owl, that frizzles toupees, Herr Conrector!" "What!--I a bird?--screech-owl, a frizzler?" cried the Conrector, full of indignation; "Sir, you are mad, born mad!"

"But the crone will get a clutch of him," cried Registrator Heerbrand.

"Yes, the crone is potent," interrupted the student Anselmus, "though she is but of mean descent; for her father was nothing but a ragged wing-feather, and her mother a dirty parsnip; but the most of her power she owes to all sorts of baneful creatures, poisonous vermin which she keeps about her."

"That is a horrid calumny," cried Veronica, with eyes all glowing in anger; "old Liese is a wise woman; and the black Cat is no baneful creature, but a polished young gentleman of elegant manners, and her cousin german."

"Can _he_ eat Salamanders without singeing his whiskers, and dying like a candle-snuff?" cried Registrator Heerbrand.

"No! no!" shouted the student Anselmus, "that he never can in this world; and the green Snake loves me, for I have a childlike mien, and I have looked into Serpentina's eyes."

"The Cat will scratch them out," cried Veronica.

"Salamander, Salamander masters them all, all!" hallooed Conrector Paulmann, in the highest fury. "But am I in a madhouse? Am I mad myself? What crazy stuff am I chattering? Yes, I am mad too! mad too!"

And with this, Conrector Paulmann started up, tore the peruke from his head and dashed it against the ceiling of the room, till the battered locks whizzed, and, tangled into utter disorder, rained down the powder far and wide. Then the student Anselmus and Registrator Heerbrand seized the punch-bowl and the gla.s.ses, and, hallooing and huzzaing, pitched them against the ceiling also, and the sherds fell jingling and tingling about their ears.

"_Vivat_ the Salamander!--_Pereat, pereat_ the crone!--Break the metal mirror!--Dig the cat's eyes out!--Bird, little Bird, from the air--_Eheu--Eheu--Evoe--Evoe_, Salamander!" So shrieked and shouted and bellowed the three, like utter maniacs. With loud weeping, Franzchen ran out; but Veronica lay whimpering for pain and sorrow on the sofa.

At this moment the door opened; all was instantly still; and a little man, in a small gray cloak, came stepping in. His countenance had a singular air of gravity; and especially the round hooked nose, on which was a huge pair of spectacles, distinguished itself from all the noses ever seen. He wore a strange peruke too--more like a feather-cap than a wig.

"Ey, many good evenings!" grated and cackled the little comical mannikin. "Is the student Herr Anselmus among you, gentlemen?--Best compliments from Archivarius Lindhorst; he has waited today in vain for Herr Anselmus; but tomorrow he begs most respectfully to request that Herr Anselmus would not forget the hour."

And with this he went out again; and all of them now saw clearly that the grave little mannikin was in fact a gray Parrot. Conrector Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand raised a horse-laugh, which reverberated through the room, and, in the intervals, Veronica was moaning and whimpering, as if torn by nameless sorrow; but as to the student Anselmus, the madness of inward horror was darting through him, and unconsciously he ran out of the door, into the street.

Instinctively he reached his house, his garret. Ere long Veronica came in to him, with a peaceful and friendly look, and asked him why, in his intoxication, he had so alarmed her; and desired him to be on his guard against new imaginations, while working at Archivarius Lindhorst's. "Good night, good night, my beloved friend!" whispered Veronica, scarce audibly, and breathed a kiss on his lips. He stretched out his arms to clasp her, but the dreamy shape had vanished, and he awoke cheerful and refreshed. He could not but laugh heartily at the effects of the punch; but in thinking of Veronica, he felt pervaded by a most delightful feeling. "To her alone," said he within himself, "do I owe this return from my insane whims. In good sooth, I was little better than the man who believed himself to be of gla.s.s; or he who durst not leave his room for fear the hens should eat him, as he imagined himself to be a barleycorn. But as soon as I am Hofrat I will marry Mademoiselle Paulmann and be happy, and there's an end of it."

At noon, as he walked through Archivarius Lindhorst's garden, he could not help wondering how all this had once appeared so strange and marvelous to him. He now saw nothing but common, earthen flowerpots, quant.i.ties of geraniums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the glittering party-colored birds which used to flout him, there were only a few sparrows fluttering hither and thither, which raised an unpleasant, unintelligible cry at sight of Anselmus. The azure room also had quite a different look; and he could not understand how that glaring blue, and those unnatural golden trunks of palm-trees, with their shapeless glistening leaves, should ever have pleased him for a moment. The Archivarius looked at him with a most peculiar, ironical smile, and asked: "Well, how did you like the punch last night, good Anselmus?"

"Ah, doubtless you have heard from the gray Parrot how--" answered the student Anselmus, quite ashamed; but he stopped short, bethinking him that this appearance of the Parrot was all a piece of jugglery of the confused senses.

"I was there myself," said Archivarius Lindhorst; "did you not see me?

But, among the mad pranks you were playing, I had nigh got lamed; for I was sitting in the punch-bowl, at the very moment when Registrator Heerbrand laid hands on it, to dash it against the ceiling; and I had to make a quick retreat into the Conrector's pipehead. Now, adieu, Herr Anselmus! Be diligent at your task; for the lost day also you shall have a speziesthaler, because you worked so well before."

"How can the Archivarius babble such mad stuff?" thought the student Anselmus, sitting down at the table to begin the copying of the ma.n.u.script, which Archivarius Lindhorst had as usual spread out before him. But on the parchment roll he perceived so many strange crabbed strokes and twirls all twisted together in inexplicable confusion, offering no resting-point for the eye, that it seemed to him well-nigh impossible to copy all this exactly. Nay, in glancing over the whole, you might have thought the parchment was nothing but a piece of thickly veined marble, or a stone sprinkled over with lichens.

Nevertheless he determined to do his utmost, and boldly dipped in his pen; but the ink would not run, do what he would; impatiently he spirted the point of his pen against his nail, and--Heaven and Earth!--a huge blot fell on the out-spread original! Hissing and foaming, a blue flash rose from the blot, and, crackling and wavering, shot through the room to the ceiling. Then a thick vapor rolled from the walls; the leaves began to rustle, as if shaken by a tempest; and down out of them darted glaring basilisks in sparkling fire; these kindled the vapor, and the bickering ma.s.ses of flame rolled round Anselmus. The golden trunks of the palm-trees became gigantic snakes, which knocked their frightful heads together with piercing metallic clang and wound their scaly bodies round Anselmus.

"Madman I suffer now the punishment of what, in insolent sacrilege, thou hast done!" So cried the frightful voice of the crowned Salamander, who appeared above the snakes like a glittering beam in the midst of the flame; and now the yawning jaws of the snakes poured forth cataracts of fire on Anselmus; and it was as if the fire-streams were congealing about his body and changing into a firm ice-cold ma.s.s. But while Anselmus' limbs, more and more pressed together and contracted, stiffened into powerlessness, his senses pa.s.sed away.

On returning to himself, he could not stir a joint; he was as if surrounded with a glistening brightness, on which he struck if he but tried to lift his hand or move otherwise.--Alas! He was sitting in a well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the library of Archivarius Lindhorst.

TENTH VIGIL

Sorrows of the student Anselmus in the Gla.s.s Bottle. Happy Life of the Cross Church Scholars and Law Clerks. The Battle in the Library of Archivarius Lindhorst. Victory of the Salamander, and Deliverance of the student Anselmus.

Justly may I doubt whether thou, kind reader, wert ever sealed up in a gla.s.s bottle; or even that any vivid tormenting dream ever oppressed thee with such a demon from fairyland. If such were the case, thou wouldst keenly enough figure out the poor student Anselmus' woe; but shouldst thou never have even dreamed such things, then will thy quick fancy, for Anselmus' sake and mine, be obliging enough to inclose itself for a few moments in the crystal. Thou art drowned in dazzling splendor; all objects about thee appear illuminated and begirt with beaming rainbow hues; all quivers and wavers, and clangs and drones, in the sheen; thou art floating motionless as in a firmly congealed ether, which so presses thee together that the spirit in vain gives orders to the dead and stiffened body. Weightier and weightier the mountain burden lies on thee; more and more does every breath exhaust the little handful of air, that still plays up and down in the narrow s.p.a.ce; thy pulse throbs madly; and, cut through with horrid anguish, every nerve is quivering and bleeding in this deadly agony. Have pity, kind reader, on the student Anselmus of whom this inexpressible torture laid hold in his gla.s.s prison; but he felt too well that death could not relieve him; for did he not awake from the deep swoon into which the excess of pain had cast him, and open his eyes to new wretchedness, when the morning sun shone clear into the room? He could move no limb; but his thoughts struck against the gla.s.s, stupefying him with discordant clang; and instead of the words, which the spirit used to speak from within him, he now heard only the stifled din of madness. Then he exclaimed in his despair "O Serpentina! Serpentina!

save me from this agony of h.e.l.l!" And it was as if faint sighs breathed around him, which spread like green transparent elder-leaves over the gla.s.s; the clanging ceased; the dazzling, perplexing glitter was gone, and he breathed more freely.

"Have not I myself solely to blame for my misery? Ah! Have not I sinned against thee, thou kind, beloved Serpentina? Have not I raised vile doubts of thee? Have not I lost my faith, and, with it, all, all that was to make me so blessed? Ah! Thou wilt now never, never be mine; for me the Golden Pot is lost, and I shall not behold its wonders any more. Ah, but once could I see thee, but once hear thy gentle sweet voice, thou lovely Serpentina!"

So wailed the student Anselmus, caught with deep piercing sorrow; then spoke a voice close by him: "What the devil ails you Herr Studiosus?

What makes you lament so, out of all compa.s.s and measure?"

The student Anselmus now noticed that on the same shelf with him were five other bottles, in which he perceived three Cross Church Scholars, and two Law Clerks.

"Ah, gentlemen, my fellows in misery," cried he, "how is it possible for you to be so calm, nay so happy, as I read in your cheerful looks?

You are sitting here corked up in gla.s.s bottles, as well as I, and cannot move a finger, nay, not think a reasonable thought but there rises such a murder-tumult of clanging and droning and in your head itself a tumbling and rumbling enough to drive one mad. But doubtless you do not believe in the Salamander, or the green Snake."

"You are pleased to jest, Mein Herr Studiosus," replied a Cross Church Scholar; "we have never been better off than at present; for the speziesthalers which the mad Archivarius gave us for all manner of pot-hook copies, are clinking in our pockets; we have now no Italian choruses to learn by heart; we go every day to Joseph's or other inns, where we do justice to the double-beer, we even look pretty girls in their faces; and we sing, like real students, _Gaudeamus igitur_, and are contented in spirit!"

"The gentlemen are quite right," added a Law Clerk; "I too am well furnished with speziesthalers, like my dearest colleague beside me here; and we now diligently walk about on the Weinberg, instead of scurvy Act-writing within four walls."

"But, my best, worthiest gentlemen!" said the student Anselmus, "do you not feel, then, that you are all and sundry corked up in gla.s.s bottles, and cannot for your hearts walk a hair's-breadth?"

Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law Clerks set up a loud laugh, and cried: "The student is mad; he fancies himself to be sitting in a gla.s.s bottle, and is standing on the Elbe-bridge and looking right down into the water. Let us go along!"

"Ah!" sighed the student, "they have never seen the sweet Serpentina; they know not what Freedom, and life in Love, and Faith, signify; and so by reason of their folly and low-mindedness, they feel not the oppression of the imprisonment into which the Salamander has cast them. But I, unhappy I, must perish in want and woe, if she, whom I so inexpressibly love, do not deliver me!"

Then, waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina's voice flitted through the room: "Anselmus! believe, love, hope!" And every tone beamed into Anselmus' prison; and the crystal yielded to his pressure, and expanded, till the breast of the captive could move and heave.

The torment of his situation became less and less, and he saw clearly that Serpentina still loved him, and that it was she alone, who had rendered his confinement in the crystal tolerable. He disturbed himself no more about his frivolous companions in misfortune, but directed all his thoughts and meditations on the gentle Serpentina.

Suddenly, however, there arose on the other side a dull, croaking, repulsive murmur. Ere long he could observe that it proceeded from an old coffee-pot, with half-broken lid, standing over against him on a little shelf. As he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly features of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded themselves; and in a few moments, the Apple-wife of the Black Gate stood before him. She grinned and laughed at him, and cried with screeching voice: "Ey, Ey, my pretty boy, must thou lie in limbo now? To the crystal thou hast run; did I not tell thee long ago?"

"Mock and jeer me; do, thou cursed witch!" said the student Anselmus.

"Thou art to blame for it all; but the Salamander will catch thee, thou vile Parsnip!"

"Ho, ho!" replied the crone, "not so proud, good ready-writer! Thou hast smashed my little sons to pieces, thou hast burnt my nose; but I must still like thee, thou knave, for once thou wert a pretty fellow; and my little daughter likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt never come unless I help thee; up thither I cannot clamber; but my cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close above thee, will gnaw in two the shelf on which thou standest; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch thee in my ap.r.o.n, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine sleek face at all injured; then I will carry thee to Mam'sell Veronica, and thou shalt marry her when thou art Hofrat."