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 masses 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
mass. But while Anselmus' limbs, more and more pressed together and
contracted, stiffened into powerlessness, his senses passed 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 Glass Bottle. Happy Life of
the Cross Church Scholars and Law Clerks. The Battle in the Library
of Archivarius Lindhorst.
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