e
delusion, but whatever he thought he always got deeper and deeper into
the dark forest. Large gnarled roots lay like snakes across the way,
stretched out, so that the student was in danger of tumbling every
moment. Stag-beetles stood like noble game in the moor, while the
purest hues of golden vegetation shone from little nooks in the rocks.
The perspiration stood on his forehead, and with increasing rapidity he
penetrated the thicket, and fled from the bright sunny world without.
It was not only the exercise of walking that made him hot, his mind was
also labouring under a burden of heavy recollections. At last, after
the pathway had long vanished from beneath his feet, he came to a
beautiful, smooth, dark spot, among some mighty oak-trees. Still he
heard his name called in the distance. 'Here,' he said, 'the rude
sound yonder will no more reach me; here I shall be quietly concealed.'
He sunk down upon a great mossy stone, his heart heaved, he was
struggling with a powerful desire. 'Forgive my presumption, great
master,' he cried, 'but there is a knowledge which must be followed by
action, otherwise it crushes a mortal. Here, nearer to the heart of
the great mother, where amid sprouting and growing, her pulse beats
more audibly,--here must I utter the magic word, which I heard from thy
sleeping lips, when thou spakest it in a dream; the word, at the sound
of which the creature casts aside its veil, the powers which labour
beneath bark and hide, and in the kernel of the rock, become visible,
and the language of birds becomes intelligible to the ear.'

"His lips already quivered to utter the word, but he restrained
himself, for there appeared before his eyes the sorrowful glance with
which his great master, Albertus, had entreated him to make no use of
the art he had accidentally acquired, since heavy things impended over
him who uttered the magic word designedly.

"Nevertheless, he did call it out loudly into the wood, as if the
prohibition and his own fear had given it additional force, and while
he did so, he stretched out his right hand.

"At once he felt a blow and a jerk, that made him think he had been
struck by lightning. His eyes were blinded, and it seemed as though a
violent whirlwind was hurling him through the immeasurable space. As
terrified and giddy he felt about him with his hands, he touched indeed
the mossy stone on which he had been standing, and therefore in his
mind regained the earth,