“The gentlemen are quite right,” added a Law Clerk; “I too am well furnished with speziesthalers, like my dearest colleague beside me here; and we now diligently walk about on the Weinberg, instead of scurvy Act-writing within four walls.”

“But, my best, worthiest gentlemen!” said the student Anselmus, “do you not feel, then, that you are all and sundry corked up in glass bottles, and cannot for your hearts walk a hair’s-breadth?”

Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law Clerks set up a loud laugh, and cried:  “The student is mad; he fancies himself to be sitting in a glass bottle, and is standing on the Elbe-bridge and looking right down into the water.  Let us go along!”

“Ah!” sighed the student, “they have never seen the sweet Serpentina; they know not what Freedom, and life in Love, and Faith, signify; and so by reason of their folly and low-mindedness, they feel not the oppression of the imprisonment into which the Salamander has cast them.  But I, unhappy I, must perish in want and woe, if she, whom I so inexpressibly love, do not deliver me!”

Then, waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina’s voice flitted through the room:  “Anselmus! believe, love, hope!” And every tone beamed into Anselmus’ prison; and the crystal yielded to his pressure, and expanded, till the breast of the captive could move and heave.

The torment of his situation became less and less, and he saw clearly that Serpentina still loved him, and that it was she alone, who had rendered his confinement in the crystal tolerable.  He disturbed himself no more about his frivolous companions in misfortune, but directed all his thoughts and meditations on the gentle Serpentina.  Suddenly, however, there arose on the other side a dull, croaking, repulsive murmur.  Ere long he could observe that it proceeded from an old coffee-pot, with half-broken lid, standing over against him on a little shelf.  As he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly features of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded themselves; and in a few moments, the Apple-wife of the Black Gate stood before him.  She grinned and laughed at him, and cried with screeching voice:  “Ey, Ey, my pretty boy, must thou lie in limbo now?  To the crystal thou hast run; did I not tell thee long ago?”

“Mock and jeer me; do, thou cursed witch!” said the student Anselmus.  “Thou art to blame for it all; but the Salamander will catch thee, thou vile Parsnip!”

“Ho, ho!” replied the crone, “not so proud, good ready-writer!  Thou hast smashed my little sons to pieces, thou hast burnt my nose; but I must still like thee, thou knave, for once thou wert a pretty fellow; and my little daughter likes thee too.  Out of the crystal thou wilt never come unless I help thee; up thither I cannot clamber; but my cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close above thee, will gnaw in two the shelf on which thou standest; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine sleek face at all injured; then I will carry thee to Mam’sell Veronica, and thou shalt marry her when thou art Hofrat.”