"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.
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