"And with glowing fantasy the apostle described how the serpent of light pants for the water of darkness, how seven-armed with thousandfold arteries of rays it pours itself into the depths where the element, dark as night, waits to receive it. They were poetical visions in apocalyptic pictures; the people listened devoutly to the incomprehensible, which, however, led a succession of gay, misty pictures before their mental vision. The prophet himself spoke with tongues of fire, and with the dauntlessness of a man in whom Heaven had deposited the jewels of its revelations as in a sacred shrine. All the time he stroked his long beard, divided it, and put it together again, yet all was done with dignity and with self-complacency. "When he sat down he refreshed himself with the milk which his graceful companion handed to him. "Two or three times more he rose, when the spirit moved him, and immediately ceased the wild tumult, the buzz of voices at his feet. "It might be about midnight when he retired with his companions. One of these was evidently a minister whom the ladies had joined. The young beauty passed close by me; was I mistaken, or did she smile pleasantly at me? And was this smile one of approval of my demeanour and appearance, or of pleasure that a young student also--for the Albertus on my cap showed that I attended the Albertina--should have joined the pious congregation that sat at the feet of the Heaven-sent preacher? Never to be forgotten was the gracious smile, the nobility of form and feature, the deep large eye. "Like a dream, that beautiful woman glided past me, and years should elapse ere I saw her again. "I was too shy, too modest to ask about her; I should have expected to destroy the dreamlike charm of that vision by any enquiries; yet whenever afterwards I read the works of the poets, when Shakespeare's, Goethe's, and Schiller's female figures stood before my mind, they invariably borrowed her features. With such deep-blue eyes, Ophelia scattered abroad her flowers, plucked to pieces, Juliet gazed upon her Romeo, Gretchen lay upon her knees before the _mater dolorosa_. Woman since then appeared more beautiful to me, but also loftier and more unapproachable. "Meanwhile I made enquiries about the new 'Paraclete' and learned much of his life and doings; how he had wandered through Germany preaching the Gospel of light and water, had here found enthusiastic disciples, there was greeted with scorn, thrown down stairs, yes, had even been locked up in a mad house. "I also learned, when on one occasion I returned to the town after the vacations, that the new Noah's ark had been released from the slip-way, but had stranded against the first pillar of the bridge and been capsized. The faith which could remove mountains was not able to bring that ark into the sea.