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I prefer to drink with my meat, and to take a glass of cognac afterwards. That is what the ladies do in France. Cognac is more fashionable than kirschwasser!" Marie Lagoutte had hardly finished with her dissertation when Sperver opened the door quietly and beckoned me to follow him. I bowed to the "honourable company," and as I was entering the passage I could hear that lady saying to her husband
I was dragged in by Sébalt, seated near Marie Lagoutte, and found a large glass of Bohemian wine in my hand before I could quite understand the meaning of it all. The old hall was echoing with merry peals of laughter, and Sperver, throwing his arm round my neck, holding his cup high, and with an attempt at gravity which showed plainly that the wine was up in his head, he shouted "Here is my son!
"That is a nice young man. He would have made a good-looking soldier." Sperver looked uneasy, but said nothing. I was full of my own thoughts. A few steps under the darkling vaults of Nideck completely effaced from my memory the queer figures of Tobias and Marie Lagoutte, poor harmless creatures, existing like bats under the mighty wing of the vulture.
When I aroused myself from this contemplation of my own thoughts, I saw Marie Lagoutte rising and preparing to go. "You have done quite right," I said as I took her to the door, "to tell me of these things, and I am much obliged to you. Have you told any one else of this adventure?" "No one, sir; such things are only to be told to the priest and the doctor."
As it seemed expected of me, I expressed my surprise, on which Tobias Offenloch came to sit at my right hand, and said "Doctor, take my advice; order him a bottle a day of Marcobrunner." "And," chimed in Marie Lagoutte, "a wing of a chicken at every meal. The poor man is frightfully thin."
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an incessant tinkling and clattering. There was sitting Sperver with his bossy forehead, his moustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his grey hair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his left Knapwurst.
Every morning there was the doleful bugle-call of the huntsman, whose occupation was gone; then came a visit to the count; after that breakfast, with Sperver's interminable speculations upon the Black Plague, the incessant gossiping and chattering of Marie Lagoutte, Maître Tobias, and all that pack of idle servants, who had nothing to do but eat and drink, smoke, and go to sleep.
Without stopping we ran into the passage which led into the count's bedroom, where we met poor Marie Lagoutte, who alone had had the courage to penetrate thither before us. She was holding in her arms the young countess, who had fainted, her head falling back, her hair flowing down behind her; she was carrying her away as fast as she could.
Bassin and Lagoutte, taught us to vault on horseback, astride and sitting, and standing upright after every fashion, in fact.
"Let me introduce to you my foster-son, Doctor Fritz, from the Black Forest," he answered proudly. "Now we shall see a change, Master Tobie. Now that Fritz has come the abominable fits will be put an end to. If I had but been listened to earlier but better late than never." Marie Lagoutte was still watching us, and her scrutiny seemed satisfactory, for, addressing the major-domo, she said
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