His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, and closed his eyes that he might not see;--but Imagination in the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased these hollow, fever-born masks alternately into lightning and shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts grew colored visions, and he dreamed this dream. He was standing at the window looking out into the churchyard; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and thigh-bones on the graves, and said, "They are my bones"; and he took a spine and the bone-legs, and stood with them, and the two arm-bones and clutched with them, and found on the grave of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on. Then he lifted a scythe beside the little flower-garden, and cried: "Fixlein, where art thou? My finger is an icicle and no finger, and I will tap on thy heart with it." The Skeleton, thus piled together, now looked for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir from it; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sand-glass, the ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a dagger, far into the air.... Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised himself as high as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with the finger,--and stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder, and vapors floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up from the ground; and he stood transfigured and without the clamm of the grave, hovering above them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently on;--and as he came nearer, the scythe and clock were gone, and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red lips;--and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent, rosebalm-dipped flesh, like the splendor of an Angel flying hither from the starry blue;--and close at hand, he was an Angel with shut snow-white eyelids.... The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now melted in bliss in his clear bosom;--and when the Angel opened its eyes, his were pressed together by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled away.---- But not his life; he opened his hot eyes, and--his good wife had hold of his feverish hand, and was standing in room of the Angel.