As soon as she had ended, she began to undress, laying aside her garments in a splendid wardrobe. First, she took from her head a golden veil, and her long black hair flowed in full ringlets down to her waist; then she loosed her bosom-dress, and the youth forgot himself and the world in gazing at the superterrestrial beauty. After some time, she went to another golden cabinet, took thereout a tablet that glittered with inlaid stones, rubies, diamonds, and all kinds of jewels, and stood contemplating it with scrutinising look. The tablet seemed to form a strange unintelligible figure, with its several lines and colours; one while, as its brightness glanced towards him, he was painfully dazzled; then, again, a soft green and blue playing over it, refreshed his eye; but he stood devouring the objects with his looks, and at the same time absorbed in deep thoughts. In his inmost heart there was opened up an abyss of forms and harmony, of longing and desire; troops of winged tones and sad and joyful melodies passed through his spirit, that was moved to the very foundation: he saw a world of pain and hope arise within himself, mighty wondrous rocks of trust and daring confidence, deep torrents as of melancholy flowing by. He no longer knew himself; and he was terrified as the fair one opened the window, and reaching forth to him the magic tablet, spoke to him these few words: "Take this in remembrance of me!" He grasped the tablet, and felt the figure; the invisible within him immediately passed away, and the light, and the potent beauty, and the strange hall, had vanished. As it were, a dark night, with cloud-curtains, fell within his inmost soul; he searched after his former feelings, after that inspiration and incomprehensible love; he gazed at the costly tablet, in which the sinking moon was mirrored faint and bluish. He still held the tablet fast pressed within his hands, when the morning dawned; and he, exhausted, giddy, and half-asleep, fell headlong down the steep mountain-side. The sun shone on the face of the stupified sleeper; who, on awaking, found himself again upon a pleasant hill. He looked around, and beheld far behind him, and scarcely discernible at the extreme horizon, the ruins of the Runenberg; he searched for the tablet, and could no where find it. Astonished and perplexed, he tried to collect his thoughts and unite his recollections; but his memory was as if filled with a confused mist, in which shapeless and unknown forms were wildly contending with one another. His entire former life lay behind him, as in a far distance; the strangest and the most familiar were so mingled together, that he found it impossible to sever them. After long struggle with himself, he at last thought that a dream, or sudden madness, must have befallen him that night; but still he could not understand how he had wandered so far into a strange and remote region.