[Illustration:  Permission Berlin Photo Co., New York.  HENSEL ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN]

Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out through the wall, he found a kind green resting-place; here he sat down, and filled a pipe from the Sanitaetsknaster or Health-tobacco, of which his friend the Conrector Paulmann had lately made him a present.  Close before him rolled and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the fair Elbe-stream; behind him rose lordly Dresden, stretching, bold and proud, its light towers into the airy sky; which again, farther off, bent itself down toward flowery meads and fresh springing woods; and in the dim distance, a range of azure peaks gave notice of remote Bohemia.  But, heedless of this, the student Anselmus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth his smoky clouds into the air.  His chagrin at length became audible, and he said:  “Of a truth, I am born to losses and crosses for my life long!  That in boyhood I never could become the King on Twelfthnight, that at Odds or Evens I could never once guess the right way, that my bread and butter always fell on the buttered side—­of all these sorrows I will not speak; but is it not a frightful destiny, that now, when, in spite of Satan, I have become a student, I must still be a jolthead as before?  Do I ever put a new coat on, without the first day smearing it with tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail or other tearing a cursed hole in it?  Do I ever bow to any Councilor or any lady, without pitching the hat out of my hands, or even slipping on the pavement, and shamefully going heels-over-head?  Had I not, every market-day, while in Halle, a regular sum of from three to four groschen to pay for broken pottery, the Devil putting it into my head to walk straight forward, like a leming-rat?  Have I ever once got to my college, or any place I was appointed to, at the right time?  What availed it that I set out half an hour before, and planted myself at the door, with the knocker in my hand?  Just as the clock is going to strike, souse! some Devil pours a wash-basin down on me, or I bolt against some fellow coming out, and get myself engaged in endless quarrels till the time is clean gone.

“Ah! well-a-day! whither are ye fled, ye blissful dreams of coming fortune, when I proudly thought that here I might even reach the height of Privy Secretary?  And has not my evil star estranged from me my best patrons?  I learn, for instance, that the Councilor, to whom I have a letter, cannot suffer cropped hair; with immensity of trouble, the barber fastens me a little cue to my hindhead; but at the first bow his unblessed knot gives way, and a little shock-dog, running snuffling about me, frisks off to the Privy Councilor with the cue in his mouth.  I spring after it in terror, and stumble against the table, where he has been working while at breakfast; and cups, plates, ink-glass, sand-box, rush jingling to the floor, and a flood of chocolate and ink overflows the “Relation” he has just been writing.  ‘Is the Devil in the man?’ bellows the furious Privy Councilor, and shoves me out of the room.