h before had filled him with
astonishment, nay, with dread. His copying proceeded rapidly and
lightly, for he felt more and more as if he were writing characters
long known to him; and he scarcely needed to cast his eye upon the
manuscript, while copying it all with the greatest exactness.

Except at the hour of dinner, Archivarius Lindhorst seldom made his
appearance, and this always precisely at the moment when Anselmus
had finished the last letter of some manuscript; then the Archivarius
would hand him another, and, directly after, leave him without
uttering a word, having first stirred the ink with a little black rod
and changed the old pens with new sharp-pointed ones. One day, when
Anselmus, at the stroke of twelve, had as usual mounted the stairs, he
found the door through which he commonly entered, standing locked; and
Archivarius Lindhorst came forward from the other side, dressed in his
strange flower-figured nightgown. He called aloud: "Today come this
way, dear Anselmus; for we must to the chamber where Bhogovotgita's
masters are waiting for us."

He stepped along the corridor, and led Anselmus through the same
chambers and halls as at the first visit. The student Anselmus again
felt astonished at the marvelous beauty of the garden; but he now
perceived that many of the strange flowers, hanging on the dark
bushes, were in truth insects gleaming with lordly colors, hovering
up and down with their little wings as they danced and whirled in
clusters, caressing one another with their antennae. On the other hand
again, the rose and azure-colored birds were odoriferous flowers;
and the perfume which they scattered mounted from their cups in low,
lovely tones, which, with the gurgling of distant fountains, and the
sighing of the high shrubs and trees, melted into mysterious harmonies
of a deep unutterable longing. The mocking-birds, which had so jeered
and flouted him before, were again fluttering to and fro over his
head and crying incessantly with their sharp, small voices: "Herr
Studiosus, Herr Studiosus, don't be in such a hurry! Don't peep into
the clouds so! You may fall on your nose--He, he! Herr Studiosus, put
your powder-mantle on; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle your toupee."
And so it went along, in all manner of stupid chatter, till Anselmus
left the garden.

Archivarius Lindhorst at last stepped into the azure chamber; the
porphyry, with the Golden Pot, was gone; instead of it, in the middle
of the