Paulmann also rose, and then sat down, with a certain earnest, grave, official mien, beside the student Anselmus, taking his hand, and saying:  “How are you, Herr Anselmus?” The student Anselmus was like to lose his wits, for in his mind there was a mad distraction, which he strove in vain to soothe.  He now saw plainly that what he had taken for the gleaming of the golden snakes was nothing but the reflection of the fireworks in Anton’s Garden:  but a feeling unexperienced till now, he himself knew not whether it was rapture or pain, cramped his breast together; and when the steersman struck through the water with his helm, so that the waves, curling as in anger, gurgled and chafed, he heard in their din a soft whispering:  “Anselmus!  Anselmus! seest thou not how we still skim along before thee?  Sisterkin looks at thee again; believe, believe, believe in us!” And he thought he saw in the reflected light three green-glowing streaks; but then, when he gazed, full of fond sadness, into the water, to see whether these gentle eyes would not again look up to him, he perceived too well that the shine proceeded only from the windows in the neighboring houses.  He was sitting mute in his place, and inwardly battling with himself, when Conrector Paulman repeated, with still greater emphasis:  “How are you, Herr Anselmus?”

With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied:  “Ah!  Herr Conrector, if you knew what strange things I have been dreaming, quite awake, with open eyes, just now, under an elder-tree at the wall of Linke’s garden, you would not take it amiss of me that I am a little absent, or so.”

“Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus!” interrupted Conrector Paulmann, “I have always taken you for a solid young man; but to dream, to dream with your eyes wide open, and then, all at once, to start up for leaping into the water!  This, begging your pardon, is what only fools or madmen could do.”

The student Anselmus was deeply affected at his friend’s hard saying; then Veronica, Paulmann’s eldest daughter, a most pretty blooming girl of sixteen, addressed her father:  “But, dear father, something singular must have befallen Herr Anselmus; and perhaps he only thinks he was awake, while he may really have been asleep, and so all manner of wild stuff has come into his head and is still lying in his thoughts.”

“And, dearest Mademoiselle!  Worthy Conrector!” interrupted Registrator Heerbrand, “may one not, even when awake, sometimes sink into a sort of dreaming state?  I myself have had such fits.  One afternoon, for instance, during coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in the very moment of corporeal and spiritual digestion, the place where a lost document was lying occurred to me, as if by inspiration; and last night, no further gone, there came glorious large Latin WRIT tripping out before my open eyes, in the very same way.”

“Ah! most honored Registrator,” answered Conrector Paulmann, “you have always had a tendency to the Poetica; and thus one falls into fantasies and romantic humors.”