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I was always a fatalist, and in that hour of strained body and soul I became something of a mystic. My panic ceased, my lethargy departed, and a more manly resolution took their place. I gripped the Schimmel by the head and turned him due left. Now I remembered where the highroad ran, and I remembered something else. For it was borne in on me that Laputa had fallen into my hands.
Schimmel had long been in bed, and his snoring greeted her as she entered, but she wakened him to tell him breathlessly what she had just seen and heard. After she had explained her anxiety about the doctor and its consequences, she continued that the apparition which the doctor had invoked was the Spirit of Truth.
He must find an assistant who would be silent and discreet and Frau Schimmel knew of one whom she could recommend, for her husband did not enjoy his newly acquired leisure; he had been so used to blowing a furnace and decocting medicines that he could not give up the occupation and consequently she could not roast so much as a pigeon without having his grim and blear-eyed visage peering over her shoulder.
How would it all end? The burghers exhibited great indulgence towards him. He had received a terrible blow, and one must forgive him for not having followed the coffin, particularly, as nothing else was wanting that was necessary to an imposing and expensive funeral: Frau Schimmel had taken care of that, having arranged it on her own responsibility.
After a long silence and much consideration the only thing that Herr Schimmel found to say in answer to these important revelations was: "It is all the same to me," to which his dear wife, with like brevity, and sincere disgust replied: "You fool!" The next morning the doctor began work afresh and with redoubled zeal.
Fran Schimmel described how the doctor's eyes had glowed at these words, and how he had looked as if an invisible hand had written "Truth" in large letters upon his forehead. He would be as certain to reach his goal as she would be to pray the holy saints for a peaceful death.
When Frau Schimmel came to the house on the following morning she found him with the little Zeno between his knees. Her suspicion was immediately aroused that the father had misused the child in order to try the effect of the elixir upon it, and she stood at the door and listened.
It was to be hung with the face, bearing the numerals and the figures of animals, towards the outside. This news threw Frau Schimmel into a great state of excitement and at the appointed hour everything stood ready for the reception of the future occupants of the Ueberhell house.
When she returned to the laboratory and found the doctor in the same place where she had left him, she said modestly: "Here I am and if it pleases the Herr Doctor to try the elixir on so humble a person as myself, I am at his service. Only one favour would I ask: would the Herr Doctor be so kind as not to ask questions about Schimmel and myself or any member of the honoured Ueberhell family."
Before she had done, for the dying Sihamba spoke slowly and with pain, Jan came leading the schimmel saddled and bridled, for Swart Piet's saddle had been put upon it, the mare he was riding having been taken by one of his men whom he had sent to drive in the captured cattle.
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