The bell-rope lengthened downward,
and became a white, transparent, gigantic serpent, which encircled and
crushed him, and girded him straiter and straiter in its coils, till
his brittle, paralyzed limbs went crashing in pieces, and the blood
spouted from his veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the
serpent, and dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill me!" he would have cried,
in his horrible agony; but the cry was only a stifled gurgle in his
throat. The serpent lifted its head, and laid its long peaked tongue
of glowing brass on the breast of Anselmus; then a fierce pang
suddenly cut asunder the artery of life, and thought fled away
from him. On returning to his senses, he was lying on his own poor
truckle-bed; Conrector Paulmann was standing before him, and saying:
"For Heaven's sake, what mad stuff is this, dear Herr Anselmus?"
SIXTH VIGIL
Archivarius Lindhorst's Garden, with some Mocking birds. The Golden
Pot. English current-hand. Pot-hooks. The Prince of the Spirits.
"It may be, after all," said the student Anselmus to himself, "that
the superfine, strong, stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely
at Monsieur Conradi's, might really be the cause of all these shocking
phantasms which so tortured me at Archivarius Lindhorst's door.
Therefore, I will go quite sober today, and so bid defiance to
whatever further mischief may assail me." On this occasion, as before,
when equipping himself for his first call on Archivarius Lindhorst,
the student Anselmus put his pen-drawings and calligraphic
masterpieces, his bars of Indian ink, and his well-pointed crow-pens,
into his pockets; and was just turning to go out, when his eye lighted
on the vial with the yellow liqueur, which he had received from
Archivarius Lindhorst.
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