but now he had a new and unpleasant sign. For
as previously he had been flung about the universe like an atom, it now
seemed to him as if his body were infinitely extended. Amid the most
frightful agonies, this newly-wakened power forced his limbs to such a
monstrous size, that he thought he must be touching the sky. The bones
of his head and chest were become as capacious as temples; into his
ears fell strange, heavenly sounds of distracting effect, and he said
to himself: 'That is the song of the stars in their golden orbits.'
The pains at last were exchanged for a titillating pleasurable
sensation, during which he felt his body again shrink up to its
ordinary size, while the gigantic form remained standing around him
like an outer shell, or a kind of atmosphere in aerial outline. The
darkness left his eyes, while great, yellow-shining surfaces of light,
as with the sensation of dazzling, freed themselves from the pupils and
glided into the corners, where they gradually disappeared.

"While he thus regained his sight, a clear-toned, sweet chorus--he did
not know whether it was the birds alone, or whether the boughs, bushes,
and grasses joined in--sang quite plainly round him:

'Yes, he shall hear it,
Yes, he must bear it;
To us he belongs alone.
Soon will he
By the green-wood tree,
Be dumb and cold as a stone.'

"In the block of mossy rock a light murmuring was audible. It seemed
as though the stone wished to move itself and could not, like one in a
trance. The student looked upon its surface, and lo! the green and red
veins were running together into a very ancient countenance, which from
its weary eyes looked upon him with such a mournful and supplicating
aspect, that he turned aside with horror, and sought consolation among
the trees, plants, and birds.

"Among these all was changed likewise. When he trod on the short brown
moss, it shrieked and groaned at the ungentle pressure, and he saw how
it wrung its little hairy hands and shake its green or yellow heads.
The stems of the plants and the trunks of the trees were in a constant
spiral motion, and at the same time the bark, or the outer skin,
allowed him to look into the inside, where little sprites were pouring
fine glistening drops into the tubes. The clear fluid ran from tube to
tube, while valves unceasingly opened and shut, until in the capillary
tubes of the leaves at the very top, it was transformed to a green
bloom. Soft exp