So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a distant thunder; but the crystal bells broke off in sharp discords. All became mute; and the student Anselmus observed how the three snakes, glittering and sparkling, glided through the grass toward the river; rustling and hustling, they rushed into the Elbe; and over the waves where they vanished, there crackled up a green flame, which, gleaming forward obliquely, vanished in the direction of the city. SECOND VIGIL How the student Anselmus was looked upon as drunk and mad. The crossing of the Elbe. Bandmaster Graun's Bravura. Conradi's Stomachic Liqueur, and the bronzed Apple-Woman. "The gentleman seems not to be in his right wits!" said a respectable burgher's wife, who, returning from a walk with her family, had paused here, and, with crossed arms, was looking at the mad pranks of the student Anselmus. Anselmus had clasped the trunk of the elder-tree, and was calling incessantly up to the branches and leaves: "O glitter and shine once more, ye dear gold snakes; let me hear your little bell-voices once more! Look on me once more, ye kind eyes; O once, or I must die in pain and ardent longing!" And with this, he was sighing and sobbing from the bottom of his heart most pitifully, and, in his eagerness and impatience, shaking the elder-tree to and fro; which, however, instead of any reply, rustled quite gloomily and inaudibly with its leaves, and so rather seemed, as it were, to make sport of the student Anselmus and his sorrows. "The gentleman seemingly is not in his right wits!" said the burgher's wife; and Anselmus felt as if you had shaken him out of a deep dream, or poured ice-cold water on him, that he might awaken without loss of time. He now first saw clearly where he was and recollected what a strange apparition had teased him, nay, so beguiled his senses as to make him break forth into loud talk with himself. In astonishment, he gazed at the woman; and at last, snatching up his hat, which had fallen to the ground in his transport, was for making off in all speed. The burgher himself had come forward in the meanwhile; and, setting down the child from his arm on the grass, had been leaning on his staff, and with amazement listening and looking at the student. He now picked up the pipe and tobacco-pouch which the student had let fall, and, holding them out to him, said: "Don't take on so dreadfully in the dark, my worthy sir, or alarm people, when nothing is the matter, after all, but having taken a sip too much; go home, like a pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it." The student Anselmus felt exceedingly ashamed; he uttered nothing but a most lamentable Ah!