their glaring
spears towards us, but we broke through the works and destroyed the
garrison, and the shining king humbly surrendered himself over the
ruins of dross. Gold in itself is nothing to him whose heart is not
set on earthly things, but to perceive this dearest and most precious
boon of nature in all and every thing, even in what is most trifling
and insignificant, that is a great matter to the philosopher. At other
times the stars showed us their curious circles which separated
themselves as history, and sunk to the earth, or the intimate
connection of tones and numbers was awakened to us and showed us links
which no word can describe, but which are again much more revealed by
tones and numbers. But in all this mysterious essence and
interweaving, that it might not again become a cold sticky mass,
floated, ever combining and ever freeing, that which separates itself,
both in itself and in things, amid the contest of ever fading
youth--the great, the unfathomable, the dialectic thought.

"'Oh blessed satisfying time of the opened intelligence, of the
wandering through the inner halls of the palace, at the metal doors of
which others knock in vain! At last----"

"The wandering student, whose lips during the narrative had been
glowing more and more, took a deep red colour, while a strange fire
flashed from his eyes, stopped short here, as though suddenly sobered
from his inspiration. The knight wished in vain for the completion of
the discourse, and then said to his friend: 'Well--_at last_?'

"'At last,' replied the student, in a tone of feigned indifference, 'we
were obliged to separate, if only for a short time. My great master
now sends me to Ratisbon to ask for certain papers from the sacristy of
the cathedral, which he left there as bishop. I shall bring them to
him, and shall then, indeed, if I can, pass my life with him.'

"The young knight poured the rest of his wine into the goblet, looked
into it, and drank the wine more slowly than before. 'Thou hast told
me strange things,' he began after a silence, 'but they do not stagger
me. God's world appears to me so beautifully adorned, that I should
take no delight in tearing away the charming veil, and looking in to
the innermost core of things, as thou callest it. The sky is blue, the
stars shine, the wood rustles, the plants give fragrance, and this
blue, this shining, this rustling, this fragrance--are they not the
most beautiful things that c