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It grieved me to the heart, when I glanced over the Eleven Vigils, now happily accomplished, and thought that to insert the Twelfth, the keystone of the whole, would never be vouchsafed me. Then I threw down my pen, and hastened to bed, that I might behold the happy Anselmus and the fair Serpentina, at least in my dreams.
She hates thee because thy childlike, pious character has annihilated many of her wicked charms. Keep true, true to me; soon art thou at the goal!" "O my Serpentina! my own Serpentina!" cried the student Anselmus, "how could I leave thee, how should I not love thee forever!"
"Ah, happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the burden of week-day life, who in the love of thy kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in Atlantis! while I poor I! must soon, nay, in a few moments, leave even this fair hall, which itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis, and again be transplanted to my garret, where, enthralled among the pettinesses of necessitous existence, my heart and my sight are so bedimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be beheld by me."
"Be of courage, young man!" cried the Archivarius; "if thou hast sterling faith and true love, Serpentina will help thee." His voice sounded like ringing metal; and as Anselmus looked up in utter terror, Archivarius Lindhorst was standing before him in the kingly form, which, during the first visit, he had assumed in the library.
And it was as if faint sighs breathed around him, which spread like green transparent elder-leaves over the glass; the clanging ceased; the dazzling, perplexing glitter was gone, and he breathed more freely. "Have not I myself solely to blame for my misery? Ah! Have not I sinned against thee, thou kind, beloved Serpentina? Have not I raised vile doubts of thee?
"Not now," said Serpentina, "till I have told thee all that in thy love of me thou canst comprehend." "Know then, dearest, that my father is sprung from the wondrous race of the Salamanders; and that I owe my existence to his love for the green Snake.
"I know," continued Serpentina, "that the strange and mysterious things with which my father, often merely in the sport of his humor, has surrounded thee, have raised horror and dread in thy mind; but now, I hope, it shall be so no more; for I came now only to tell thee, dear Anselmus, from the bottom of my heart and soul, all and sundry to a tittle that thou needest to know for understanding my father, and so learn the real condition of both of us."
"What is to come of all this," said he to himself, "I know not; but if it be some mad delusion and conjuring work that has laid hold of me, the dear Serpentina still lives and moves in my inward heart, and rather than leave her I will perish altogether; for I know that the thought in me is eternal, and no hostile Principle can take it from me; and what else is this thought but Serpentina's love?"
He could move no limb; but his thoughts struck against the glass, stupefying him with discordant clang; and instead of the words, which the spirit used to speak from within him, he now heard only the stifled din of madness. Then he exclaimed in his despair "O Serpentina! Serpentina! save me from this agony of Hell!"
Account of the Freehold Property to which Anselmus removed, as son-in-law of Archivarius Lindhorst; and how he lives there with Serpentina. Conclusion.
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