Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/109

 piercing metallic clang; and wound their scaly bodies round Anselmus.

"Madman! suffer now the punishment of what, in capricious irreverence, thou hast done "So cried the frightful voice of the crowned Salamander, who appeared above the snakes like a glittering beam in the midst of the flame: and now the yawning jaws of the snakes poured forth cataracts of fire on Anselmus; and it was as if the fire-streams were congealing about his body, and changing into a firm ice-cold mass. But while Anselmus' limbs, more and more pressed together, and contracted, stiffened into powerlessness, his sense passed away. On returning to himself, he could not stir a joint: he was as if surrounded with a glistening brightness, on which he struck if he but tried to lift his hand.—Alas! He was sitting in a well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the library of Archivarius Lindhorst.

TENTH VIGIL

may I doubt whether thou, favourable reader, wert ever sealed up in a glass bottle; or even that any vivid tormenting dream ever oppressed thee with such necromantic trouble. If so were the case, thou wilt keenly enough figure out the poor Student Anselmus' woe: but shouldst thou never have even dreamed such things, then will thy quick fancy, for Anselmus' sake and mine, be obliging enough still to enclose itself for a few moments in the crystal. Thou art drowned in dazzling splendour; all objects about thee appear illuminated and begirt with beaming rainbow hues: all quivers and wavers, and clangs and drones, in the sheen; thou art swimming, motionless and powerless as in a firmly congealed ether, which so presses thee together that the spirit in vain