set up, her gossips, leaving their cake and brandy-tables, encircled the young man, and with plebeian violence stormfully scolded him, so that, for shame and vexation, he uttered no word, but merely held out his small and by no means particularly well-filled purse, which the crone eagerly clutched and stuck into her pocket.  The firm ring now opened; but as the young man started off, the crone called after him:  “Ay, run, run thy ways, thou Devil’s bird!  To the crystal run—­to the crystal!” The squealing, creaking voice of the woman had something unearthly in it, so that the promenaders paused in amazement, and the laugh, which at first had been universal, instantly died away.  The student Anselmus, for the young man was no other, felt himself, though he did not in the least understand these singular phrases, nevertheless seized with a certain involuntary horror; and he quickened his steps still more, to escape the curious looks of the multitude, which were all turned toward him.  As he worked his way through the crowd of well-dressed people, he heard them murmuring on all sides:  “Poor young fellow!  Ha! what a cursed bedlam it is!” The mysterious words of the crone had, oddly enough, given this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic turn; and the youth, before unobserved, was now looked after with a certain sympathy.  The ladies, for his fine shape and handsome face, which the glow of inward anger was rendering still more expressive, forgave him this awkward step, as well as the dress he wore, though it was utterly at variance with all mode.  His pike-gray frock was shaped as if the tailor had known the modern form only by hearsay; and his well-kept black satin lower habiliments gave the whole a certain pedagogic air, to which the gait and gesture of the wearer did not at all correspond.

The student had almost reached the end of the alley which leads out to the Linke Bath; but his breath could stand such a rate no longer.  From running, he took to walking; but scarcely did he yet dare to lift an eye from the ground; for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round him, and every kind look from this or that fair damsel was to him but the reflex of the mocking laughter at the Black Gate.  In this mood, he had got to the entrance of the bath; one group of holiday people after the other were moving in.  Music of wind-instruments resounded from the place, and the din of merry guests was growing louder and louder.  The poor student Anselmus was almost on the point of weeping; for he too had expected, Ascension-day having always been a family-festival with him, to participate in the felicities of the Linkean paradise; nay, he had purposed even to go the length of a half “portion” of coffee with rum, and a whole bottle of double beer, and, that he might carouse at his ease, had put more money in his purse than was properly permissible and feasible.  And now, by this fatal step into the apple-basket, all that he had about him had been swept away.  Of coffee, of double beer, of music, of looking at the bright damsels—­in a word, of all his fancied enjoyments, there was now nothing more to be said.  He glided slowly past, and at last turned down the Elbe road, which at that time happened to be quite solitary.