"I am sorry I called you a goose, and as for your lack of brains, well
you might have a few more, but, and this I can assure you, you are honest
and true and understand your business, and if you will only be as good to
me as I have always been to you.  .  .  ."

"Oh,  Herr.  .  .  ."  Widow Vorkel interrupted him, and covered her face
with her apron; but he would not let her finish her sentence, so great
was his excitement and continued in a hoarse voice: "You must grant what
I ask, Vorkel, after all these years, and if you will, you must take that
little phial there and inhale its contents, and when you have done so you
must let me ask you some questions."

After much persuasion, the housekeeper yielded to the wishes of her
master, and while she still held the little bottle from which the ether
escaped, to her nose, the Court apothecary questioned her hastily: "Do
you think that I have always acted like a man, diligently striving for
the good of himself and his house?"

Some strange change seemed to take place in Frau Vorkel; she planted her
hands on her hips most disrespectfully--a thing she never did except
perhaps when she was scolding the maid or the butcher boy--and laughed
loud and scornfully: "My, what a question!  You may, perhaps, have a
larger stock of useless information than an old woman like me,--though
strictly speaking I cannot be called an old woman yet--but despite my
being stupid and a 'goose,' I have always been wiser than you, and I know
which side one's bread is buttered on.  Bless me!  And is there anything
more idiotic than that you, the father of the best son in the world,
should sit here alone, fretting yourself yellow and lean until from a
stately looking man you grow to be a scarecrow, when one word from you
would bring your only child back again and with him the wife and sweet
grandchild, that you might all enjoy life together!  If that isn't sheer
folly and a sin and a shame.  .  .  ."

Here she checked herself, for her habitually decorous master stood before
her in his night shirt, barefooted, and laughed loud and merrily,
clapping himself boisterously on his wasted ribs and on the shrunken
thighs that carried his thin body.  The precise widow was very much
upset, she was also horrified at the insolent answer which,--she knew not
how,--had just passed her lips.  She endeavored to find some words of
excuse but they were not necessary, for the Court apothecary called out,
"Magnificent!  Glorious!  May all the saints be praised, we have found
it."  And before the worthy woman knew what he was about the gray-haired
invalid had caught her in his arms and kissed her heartily on both
cheeks.  But the happy excitement had been too much for him and with a
low groan he sank down on the edge of the bed and sobbed bitterly.

Frau Vorkel was greatly disturbed for she guessed--and it would seem with
reason--that her good master had gone out of his mind.  But she presently
changed her opinion, for after he had cried unrestrainedly until he was
exhausted, Herr Ueberhell gave her a prompt proof of his sanity and
returning health.  In his kindly and polite manner of former times, he
begged her to set out in the kitchen a bottle of the oldest and best
Bacharacher.  There he bade her bring a second glass and invited her to
drink, and clink glasses with him because the greatest piece of good luck
had happened to him that day that it was in the power of the blessed
saints to grant to mortal man.  He, the father, had discovered in Leipsic
what his son had sought in vain at all the most famous Universities of
Italy, and if he should succeed in one remaining step, the fame of the
Ueberhells, like that of the Roman Horatii, would reach to the skies.

Then he became more serious and confessed that he was very weak and
broken, and that when he had gone to bed earlier in the evening he had
felt that his last hour was not far distant.  Death itself sometimes
floats 'twixt cup and lip, as has been remarked by a heathen philosopher,
and if he should be called away before he had seen Melchior again, then
must she be his messenger and tell his son that he had found that part of
the White Lion, of the white tincture of argentum potabile or potable
silver, which his letter had put him on the track of.  His son would know
what he meant, and to-morrow he would write down the particulars if he
should succeed that night in finding again the substance through which he
had attained to the greatest wonder that science had achieved since the
days of Adam.

He emptied bumper after bumper and clinked glasses at least a dozen times
with Frau Vorkel, who was immensely tickled with the unwonted honour.

After that he drew his chair closer to hers that he might better impress
upon her what she was to say to Melchior.  He began by telling her that
she could never understand the full meaning of what had happened but that
she must take his word for it, he had discovered an elixir whose effect
was most wonderful and would change the whole course of events.  From now
onwards, lying would be impossible, the reign of truth was at hand and
deceit had been routed from its last stronghold.

As she, however, shrank back from him, still somewhat fearful, he
demanded loftily if she ever would have dared to announce to him, her old
master, so candidly what she thought of him, as she had done an hour ago,
if she had not inhaled the contents of the phial.  And Frau Vorkel had to
admit that she had been forced by some occult power to utter those
disrespectful speeches.  She looked with awed wonder, first at her
master, then at the little bottle, and suddenly broke out with: "My!  My
What will be left for the judges to do when everyone can be forced to
speak out boldly and disclose his smallest sin.  My!  My!  But then we
shall hear pretty tales!  From the Burgomaster down, everyone in Leipsic
will have to get a new pair of ears, for what one hears will be as
outrageous and unseemly as among the savages."

These observations showed the Court apothecary that Frau Vorkel had,
despite her want of intelligence, grasped to a certain extent the
importance of his discovery; while this pleased him in a way, it also
made him uneasy, therefore he made her swear on the crucifix that so long
as she lived she would never impart to any living soul, his son excepted,
what she had that evening experienced.

Then Herr Ueberhell went back to his search for the unknown element which
had given to his son's elixir the power that had been exhibited in such
wonderful fashion.  But he did not succeed in finding the right
ingredient, for as often as he called Frau Vorkel to come and inhale the
new mixture, she gave such plausible and politic answers to his dangerous
questions that he could be by no means sure of her absolute truthfulness.
Then too the operations progressed slowly because that day at noon his
finger had been badly cut by the bursting of a glass retort.  So
presently he ceased work for a while and insisted that Frau Vorkel should
take the phial in her own hand and inhale its contents once more, because
it pleased him to try the power of the elixir.

With an amused smile he asked her if she used the great quantities of
wool, which she so constantly demanded, for no other purpose than to knit
socks for him.

The phial trembled in the hand of the housekeeper, and before she could
help it her response had passed her lips:

"You have all the socks that you need and it is surely no great crime for
me to knit a few pairs to warm the feet of your assistant, that poor,
silent worm who stands downstairs the livelong day in the cold shop."

Despite this reply Herr Ueberhell only laughed and continued the
inquisition gaily.  He next wished to know who was dearer to the heart of
the housekeeper, the assistant or her late husband, to which she rejoined
"Why should I lament Vorkel?  He was a bully, who never could learn how
to cut out a coat, and always stole his customers' cloth."  At that
moment there was an ominous crash on the floor, and a powerful odour
filled the laboratory; the phial had slipped from the hands of the
frightened woman.

What happened after that Frau Vorkel even in her old age shuddered to
recall.  How it could have been possible for the amiable and pious Court
apothecary to give utterance to such objurgations and invectives, such
sacrilegious curses and anathemas, and how she, a respectable and proper
woman, of good Leipsic people, ever could have allowed herself to attack
any one, least of all her excellent master, in such abusive language were
problems she could never solve.

Yet they must not be censured for their use of Billingsgate, for the
strong aroma of the elixir forced them to tear aside the veil which in
Leipsic, as elsewhere, clothes the ugly truth as with a pleasing garment,
and to lay bare all the rancour that filled their hearts.

Later when she thought about the breaking of the phial, the conviction
grew upon her limited intelligence that this accident would perhaps prove
in the end to be the best thing that could have happened, not only for
her but for all mankind.  To her excellent master, at least, the Elixir
of Truth proved fatal all too soon; the intense excitement of that night
had shaken him so cruelly that before the day dawned the feeble flame of
his life had flickered out.

Frau Vorkel found him dead the next morning in his laboratory.  He must
have gone thither to seek once more for the lost substance after she had
helped him to bed.  Before he had begun his work he must have wished to
encourage himself by a glance at the portrait of his grandchild, for as
she opened the door the sheet of paper with the red crayon drawing was
wafted from the open chest, beside which her master had fallen, and like
a butterfly, fluttered down upon the heart that had ceased to beat
several hours before.

Six months after the death of the Court apothecary, Melchior Ueberhell
returned home and Frau Vorkel or, as she must now be called, Frau
Schimmel, was the only person to whom he wrote to announce the hour of
his arrival in Leipsic.

In his letter the young doctor begged her to undertake the responsibility
of engaging a man servant and a kitchen maid for him, and of seeing that
there was a fire laid on his hearth to welcome him.  He also asked "his
faithful old friend" to nail up before the furnace of the laboratory on
the first floor the brass triangle which the messenger, who brought the
letter, would give to her.  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.

Doctor Melchior and his family waited in Connewitz for the sun to set
that he might enter his native town after it was dark and yet before the
city gates were closed; for it was characteristic of his retiring nature
to wish to avoid exposing himself and his beautiful wife and child to the
vulgar curiosity of the people.  These two had made the journey in a
litter carried by mules.

As it was just the time for the Easter fair and many strangers were
arriving in Leipsic the travellers passed through the Peterstrasse,
across the market-place and entered their newly built house without
attracting any attention.

It was too dark for them to see the statue of Minerva on the peak of the
high gable and the sun-dial on its face with the circle of animals, but
the lighted windows on the ground-floor and in the first story gave the
house a hospitable air.

Frau Schimmel who had long been awaiting their arrival went out to meet
them and the new man servant held the lantern so that they could see her
curtseys.

"May the holy saints bless your homecoming!" the old lady called out, and
Melchior felt himself choke at the host of sweet memories evoked by this
greeting--of how his mother used to fold his hands and teach him to pray
to the holy patrons of the house, of the sad hour when he had received
the news of his father's death--and to his astonishment he felt the warm
tears running down his cheeks, the first he had shed for many years and
almost before he knew it himself, he had caught Frau Schimmel to his
heart and kissed her tenderly.

Then he turned to his slim young wife, who with the boy was standing
behind him, and presented her to the old housekeeper: "The dearest
treasure that I won in Italy!  I commend her to your love."

Frau Schimmel raised the beautiful Italian's hand to her lips and lifted
the little boy and hugged him.  Melchior in the mean while hurried to the
entrance door, there he bowed three times and solemnly lifted aloft his
arms toward the evening-star that was just showing itself above the roof
of a house across the market-place.

The old housekeeper noticed this, and rejoiced for she thought that
Melchior was returning thanks to the holy saints for a safe journey, but
she was disillusioned when she heard him open his lips and cry towards
heaven an invocation which was neither German nor Latin, for she knew the
sound of the latter tongue, having heard it so often at mass, but a
combination of strange sounding words more like those that she used to
hear her late master muttering over his work in the laboratory, with his
son's letter before him.  It was certainly no Christian prayer and her
heart sank within her.  When the doctor had ended the ceremony which for
all she knew might be an invocation of evil spirits, and entered the
house with his wife and child, she went up to him and without a moment's
indecision made the sign of the cross on his breast and another on the
curly head of the child.  Melchior laughed at her but did not rebuff her.
Soon the travellers were seated about the neatly laid table in their own
house and Frau Schimmel had her reward in seeing Melchior enjoy the home-
made dishes.  And little Zeno--for that was the name of the Court
apothecary's grandchild--drink the good milk and munch the butter cakes
which she had baked to celebrate their arrival.  But the young wife
hardly tasted anything.

Did not the food please her?  Perhaps she was accustomed in Italy to a
different way of cooking?  "Other nations, other customs."

But who could feel annoyed with that heavenly creature?

Frau Schimmel was of the opinion that she had never seen any one to equal
her, and could not bear to take her eyes off her.  Yet the appearance of
the wife of her old favorite filled her with forebodings, and suddenly,
though she was by no means superstitious or given to presentiments, she
seemed to see Frau Bianca--so the young Italian was called--lying on her
bier, a light veil over her, and a wreath of lilies-of-the-valley on her
raven hair.  A sad quiet face!

Frau Schimmel's vision must have been caused by the young wife's
excessive paleness.  "White as snow, black as ebony" fitted her, as well
the beauty of the fairy tale, only "red as blood" was wanting.  She was
also as tall and slender as the lilies in the little garden that the
Court apothecary had owned outside the Petersthor.

After supper Frau Schimmel helped the mother to bathe the little Zeno and
to put him to bed, and Melchior also assisted at the performance.  As the
old lady looked from mother to child a great pity filled her heart for
the dear son of her late master who had staked his happiness on a
creature so ethereal that the first wind might blow her away; such
delicate perfection as that, if her experience did not deceive her, was
hardly adapted to the needs of an everyday German husband.  But then did
Melchior look like such an one?  No.

Again she felt a cold shiver go down her back, for Melchior had taken the
bath sheet and was holding it in front of him waiting to wrap the child
in it as it was taken out of its tub, and it seemed to her as if he had
on a shroud and his bloodless emaciated face with his black hair and
moustache looked ghostly over the top of it.

It annoyed her that she should have these stupid, sad thoughts on the
occasion of such a happy home coming!

She did her best to drive them away and the child helped her, for it, at
least, looked lively enough as it sat in the warm water, and kicked, and
splashed, and laughed, and cooed, calling to its parents and then to Frau
Schimmel.  When it tried to pronounce her name, her heart overflowed and
she answered absently, for she was saying a silent Paternoster for the
health and welfare of this blessed child who somehow seemed even lovelier
than Melchior had once been, though in his time she had considered him
"the sweetest baby that had ever lived."

When the child was in bed the mother folded its hands and murmured what
Frau Schimmel knew to be a prayer, but the father touched, its forehead
and the place about the heart with an essence, speaking at the same time
some incomprehensible words.  Whatever they meant, they seemed to agree
well enough with the incomparable child.

The young wife was tired after her long journey and went early to bed,
and when the housekeeper was finally left alone with Melchior, he begged
her to tell him how things had gone with his father, after his departure.

The son of her late master had, then, brought back from Italy his tender
and affectionate heart, however stern and anxious his long and colourless
face might seem; and when he heard of the old man's longing to see him,
and death, his eyes were wet with tears.

He interrupted the course of her narrative but seldom; when she came to
his father's last hours, however, and the success of the experiment which
had been made on her with the elixir, he plied her with question upon
question until he was satisfied as to what he wished to know.  Then he
suddenly stood still in the middle of the room and lifting his eyes and
arms on high cried aloud, like one in an ecstasy:

"Eternal Truth, holy Truth!  Thy kingdom come!"

These words went through Frau Schimmel like a knife, and as Melchior
stood there looking up at the ceiling as if he expected it to open
and disclose to him a sight of Heaven, he seemed so great, and
unapproachable, and apart, that she feared him, though in years gone by
she had tucked his luncheon into his knapsack before sending him off to
school, and tremblingly she yielded to his will as she had done before to
his father's and swore again a solemn oath never to reveal what she might
see or hear concerning the elixir.

This vow oppressed Frau Schimmel and she breathed more freely when he
began to talk about things within the range of her comprehension, about
the details of the housekeeping, and the laboratory on the second floor
with the big furnace.  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.

The sensible woman foresaw that idleness would soon render the old
bridegroom discontented, and Doctor Melchior, who remembered the silent
man and his skilful hands, was very easily persuaded to give him a trial.
At the back of the house there was a cheerful suite of rooms where the
housekeeper and the apprentices had formerly lived.  Melchior now put
this apartment at the disposition of the old couple.  Frau Schimmel would
lend her aid to his wife, for Frau Bianca understood neither German nor
the management of a German household, while from Herr Schimmel he
anticipated the best particularly as he--the doctor--meant to devote
himself at first entirely to the discovery of a remedy for his wife,
whose condition filled him with the deepest apprehension.

The new laboratory was presently the scene of the most zealous labours,
and Herr Schimmel was delighted with his new position, for no apothecary
and chemist had ever before had such a well-fitted furnace and such
delicate scales and instruments to work with; and if he did not
understand what was the end of so much weighing and fusing and
distilling, or what the remedies were that the doctor was always
decanting from the boiling liquids, yet the occupation made the long
summer days pass most pleasantly, for he had none of that love of the
open air that most Leipzigers bring into the world with them.

Since his apprenticeship, and a whole lifetime had passed since then,
he had left the apothecary shop only twice a year to take a holiday,
and on none of these occasions had he ever seen green trees, for his
"outings" as he called them, fell, according to his own wish, on the
festival of the "Three Kings" in January, and on the twenty-seventh of
March which was his saint's day, his name being Rupert.

Of the eighty holidays that lay behind him--all of which he had spent in
going to see a sister who was married to a miller and lived in Gohlis--
nine and thirty times it had rained, and forty-one times it had snowed.
In consequence of this "a walk in the fresh air" always suggested to his
mind, damp clothes, wet feet, ruined shoes, a cold in the head, and an
attack of indigestion--the result of his sister's greasy cooking.  His
wife, too, preferred the inside of the city walls, "where" as she was so
fond of saying, "you know where you are."

Thus even in summer Herr Schimmel was always on hand to help the doctor,
nor had he cause to complain of being over worked, for the master seemed
as fond of a walk in the open air as the assistant was averse to one, and
when May came and the fruit trees were in blossom, when the delicate
green leaves of the beeches burst from the bud, and the oaks shed their
dry brown foliage in order to deck themselves out in young green, and the
dandelions embroidered the fields with gold and then sprinkled them over
with silver tissue, when the cowslips and daisies and violets and their
spring companions in purple and yellow appeared, and the larches on the
banks of the Pleisse turned green, when the nightingale sang and rejoiced
in the woods, then Doctor Melchior Ueberhell rarely spent a sunny
afternoon at home.

With his beautiful young wife on his arm he wandered through the lovely
Laubwald--that precious possession of the city--and though he had often
said while in Italy, where it is dryer and the foliage sparser than in
Germany, that there was nothing so beautiful as the abounding brooks and
the dense greenery of his native forests, it gave him sincere joy, that
spring, to have his opinion confirmed and to see that his dearly loved
wife cared as much for the German woods as he did.

When in their walks they encountered other burghers, all eyes rested on
the handsome pair, for if Melchior were thin, his figure was tall and his
features good, and there was a strange charm in his big, dark, eyes that
seemed to find more in the woods than was visible to others, moreover the
black clothes of his profession sat as well upon him as did his wife's
white dresses and kerchiefs of costly stuffs upon her.  These she was
fond of relieving by a bit of light blue, her favourite colour.  The slim
young Italian, with her bowed head and beautiful pale face framed in its
black hair, seemed like an elf who had gone out in her light dress to
dance the May dance in the moonlight and had decked herself with forget-
me-not and gentian.

Whoever saw her felt glad, for it seemed to him as if he had met with a
piece of good fortune, but no one sought to make her acquaintance,
although the doctor had not omitted to take her, soon after their
arrival, to call upon his relatives and the dignitaries of the city.
People had asked them at first to dine, but as Melchior always refused
because of his wife's delicate health, they did not press the matter;
for no one could talk with her as she understood no German, while all who
heard her light cough felt that the doctor was right to guard his fragile
treasure so carefully.

When the few matrons who visited her called upon her, instead of finding
her in the kitchen or the cellar, they found her lying upon the sofa with
a book or her guitar in her hands, or perhaps playing with her little
boy, and the amiable ones among them explained it by her pale face and
delicate air, but the severer ones said that such idleness was the
Italian custom and they pitied the doctor.

What the feminine relatives of the doctor chiefly resented was the fact
that the young couple seemed to get on so perfectly well without them.
Happiness indeed shone in their eyes, and the silent doctor seemed to
find his tongue when he walked in the woods and fields with his beloved
wife.  The notary Anselmus Winckler was also loud in his praises of both
of them.  He was the only person who ever joined them in their walks
through the woods, and as he had been for several years Melchior's
companion at school in Bologna, and had there learned to speak the
sweet Italian tongue, he could talk with Frau Blanca like one of her
own countrymen.  He was a convivial person, and when he was in the
tavern, or dining with a friend, he would expatiate on how learned the
doctor was in all the secrets of nature and how well Dr. Vitali, Frau
Bianca's father, had known how to cultivate her appreciation of the good
and the beautiful.  To hear her questions and her husband's tender and
wise replies was a pleasure unspeakable.

If the weather were fine the doctor would sometimes go out in the
mornings also, and then he liked best to take his young wife to the
Ueberhell garden outside the Petersthor, and show her what rare herbs and
fruit-trees his father and grandfather had planted, and Frau Bianca
amused herself by gathering the flowers, or helping her child to pick the
ripe cherries and early pears.

In Bologna she had found it difficult to entice her husband away from his
work, indeed her own father, his master, had held him back, and now she
rejoiced that in the new home he was willing to give her so many hours of
his time, moreover--he had confessed it to her--instead of the elixir,
which she had been taught from childhood to regard as the worthiest
object of research, he was seeking for a medicine that should cure her.

Autumn came, and the starlings assembled on the Thomaskirche, the storks
in the village, and the swallows on the roof of the neighbour's house to
prepare for their flight towards the south; heavy storms tore the leaves
from the trees, one dull rainy day followed another, and when at last the
mountain-ash berries and the barberries were shining in all their
brightest scarlet, the rosy flush that had been coaxed into the young
wife's cheeks during the long, dry, happy summer changed to a crimson
spot, her eyes acquired a strained, longing, mournful expression, and
after she had had an attack of coughing she would sink together as if the
autumn winds had broken her as they had the stems of the mallow which
were hanging from the trellis in the little garden outside.

Then a day came when the Court physician Olearius found his way into
"The Three Kings."  It was in the middle of December and straw was strewn
in the street in front of the Ueberhell house.  Those who had held aloof
from the young couple in their happy hours now drew near in their
misfortune.  It seemed as if the young Italian had suddenly become the
idol of the inhabitants of Leipsic, so many were the inquiries about her
condition, so numerous the friendly offers of service, the kindly gifts
of hot-house flowers and rare wines.  Just as the Christmas bells rang
out along the streets of the city the joyful tidings "Christ is born"
a sharp cry rang through the rooms of The Three Holy Kings and Melchior
knelt beside his blighted flower that now was whiter even than the lily,
for the last shimmer of red had faded forever from her wan cheeks, and he
wrung his hands in utter despair.

The funeral train that followed the young Italian, who had appeared among
them like a fleeting vision of Paradise, would have done honour to the
wife of the Chief Justice.

Every one who was respectable and aristocratic in Leipsic followed her,
as well as many humbler folk on whom Bianca's glance had rested but once.
People were now so open-hearted, and seemed to wish to give to the dead
what they had withheld from the living.  Hot tears were shed, for though
not one of all the mourners had ever really known Bianca, they felt that
they had lost something beautiful.

The only member of the family of Ueberhell who did not make part of the
funeral train was the chief mourner, the bereaved Doctor Melchior
himself.

Alone and tearless he paced the chamber that Bianca had occupied.  He
denied himself to all who wished to see him or to comfort him, he even
refused to admit the notary Winckler.

That the flower of his life was crushed, and that he carried a death-
wound in his heart was all that he felt or thought.

Frau Schimmel began at last to fear that he too would die.  If the vision
that showed her Frau Bianca on her death-bed had come true, why should
not the other one concerning the doctor?  He ate and drank less than a
Carthusian on a fast-day, he offended all the good people who had shown
his wife such honour, he went neither to mass nor to his work in the
laboratory, and consequently her husband, too, was idle and threatened to
become unbearable once more.

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.  When the great healer,
Time, had comforted him, then would he draw near to them again, most of
his friends thought, yes even nearer than before, now that he had lost
his invalid wife who had hindered him from joining their gay circles.

We are so willing to be lenient to the unfortunate, for a Greater than we
has visited them with sorrow such as man could not inflict.

But it ended otherwise than his friends anticipated.  The Three Kings lay
there like a deserted house, and although the tall chimney on the roof
began to belch forth streams of smoke by night, as well as by day, hardly
four weeks after the death of Bianca, it was commonly supposed that the
place was unoccupied.  Commonly supposed: for once in a while the knocker
was heard when Herr Winckler called, happy childish laughter floated out
from the open window, or Frau Schimmel was seen with her basket on her
arm going to market.

But no one ever met the doctor, neither at mass nor in the street, and
yet he did not always remain at home.

In summer at sunrise he went to the churchyard, and from there into the
woods; in winter, when the first stars appeared, he wrapped himself in
his black cloak and went to Bianca's grave, and thence to one of the
neighbouring villages, but he never entered anywhere, and only the sexton
who admitted him to the graveyard, and the gate watchman, who opened the
burgher's wicket to him, ever exchanged greetings with him.

At home he wandered around no longer, idle and fasting, but ate his meals
regularly, and threw himself into his work with such passionate energy,
that even the industrious Schimmel found it too much, and Frau Schimmel
grew anxious.  The latter, too, knew what the doctor hoped to accomplish
by his hard work, for she had spied upon him, but she must not be blamed
as it had been with the most praiseworthy intention.

Four weeks after Bianca's death, and after he had shed many hot and
heart-felt tears, Melchior turned for the first time to his work again.

It happened late in the evening, and before he went into the laboratory
he uttered such strange words over the sleeping child that Frau Schimmel,
who was watching beside it, was frightened, especially as Schimmel had
not been called to aid the doctor, and what might happen to the
distraught man, if he were left to work alone, passed in gloomy visions
before the old lady.  So she concealed herself behind the bellows that
were attached to the furnace, and there she was witness of events that
sent cold shivers down her back whenever she thought of them.

In his best holiday costume of black velvet puffed with silk he entered
the laboratory, holding himself very erect.  The high, arched room was
only dimly lighted by a hanging-lamp, but when Frau Schimmel heard his
steps she shrank together till, as she fancied, she must have become
smaller and less easily discoverable.  What she feared was that he might
start the furnace and she should be obliged to reveal herself because of
the heat.

But to her great relief he walked straight into the middle of the
laboratory and stopped directly under the lamp, which was suspended from
the point where the ribs of the vaulting intersected.  There he waved a
fresh laurel branch towards every side of the room and called out the
same words and names that he had murmured by the bed-side of his son,
only louder and more imperiously.

To the listener it was perfectly clear that this was an invocation of
spirits, and her knees trembled under her, and her teeth chattered so
audibly that she feared he must hear her.  Though she closed her eyes
tightly in order not to see the hellish brood that was about to pervade
that Christian house, fearing that she might be strangled by them or go
mad; yet the unholy creatures must have entered the laboratory obedient
to their master's call for she distinctly heard him greet one of them
solemnly.

As she did not smell any sulphur fumes nor see any dancing flames when
she peeped out from under her half-closed lids, she gathered sufficient
courage to look about her.  But she saw nothing save the doctor on his
knees talking into the corner of the laboratory, where there was nothing
but the broom with which she had swept the stone floor that morning, and
the shabby old brown peruke that Herr Schimmel was in the habit of
putting on in the winter when he crossed the court-yard.

These apparitions she knew so intimately that she began to be reassured,
and her confidence once restored she reflected that either the spirits
must have held her unworthy of a sight of them and have been visible only
to the master, or else that the doctor had gone completely out of his
mind.  Of her own sanity she had no doubts for her mind was made of
sterner stuff and would therefore be less easily affected.

Whether Doctor Melchior were holding converse with the broom, or the
peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel
could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be
able to listen attentively.

She crossed herself several times for the sake of greater safety, and
what she heard from the doctor's own mouth remained a secret between her
and Schimmel.

Not a word did she lose till Melchior went into the library next the
laboratory, and then she thought it expedient to leave her hiding-place
and hurry to her room.

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.  Whether it had been obedient to the
call she could not say, but, at any rate it had been no demon of hell-God
be praised--bringing a reek of the pit, and besides Satan was the Prince
of Lies and would consider himself insulted if he were called the Spirit
of Truth, moreover the spirit who had appeared to the doctor had behaved
in the most exemplary manner.

The master, too, had confessed with true Christian humility and self
reproach that he had sinned against the Spirit of Truth, to whom none the
less he had dedicated his body and soul, inasmuch as, influenced by his
great love for his wife, he had devoted himself to finding a remedy which
would cure her, and had thus become a traitor to the object of his life.

After this he had sprung up and held aloft his hand with the forefinger
extended and sworn to the spirit that nothing here after would seduce him
from the pursuit of the elixir which was to render Truth triumphant in
the world.

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.

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.

Every drug that had been reserved from the laboratory of the late Court
apothecary was brought, mixed with the elixir and fused; and he tried
each new mixture on himself, for Frau Schimmel was not to be persuaded to
smell any more elixirs.

She, however, was more studious than ever of the necessities of the
household, and of the material comfort of the doctor and his child, and
when she noticed that her master began to cough as his dead wife had
done, she entreated him to take better care of himself, and not to leave
his son an orphan she also instigated Herr Winckler to beg him to
consider his own welfare and that of the child.

There was yet another thing that made her unhappy.

Her whole heart was wrapped up in little Zeno, and when he was dressed in
his best on feast-days a prettier and nobler looking child than he was
not to be seen.

But the doctor did not seem to have much affection for him; yet in the
evenings when the little one was in bed he went through the same
performance that had been customary during the lifetime of its mother,
and once in a while he would lift the child out of the cradle and press
it to his heart so passionately that the boy, in a fright would struggle
to get away from him and would cry for Frau Schimmel.  Finally the child
became so afraid of its father that it would not go near him and this the
old housekeeper could bear no longer, so she took her courage in her
hands and spoke to her master about it.

She began by saying she had not forgotten that, according to his dead
father the saints had endowed her with a very limited intelligence, but
that she knew enough to be certain that it could be neither wise, nor
right for a man who had been blessed with such a fine son, to be
indifferent to his treasure and indeed to estrange it.

The extraordinary man looked at her with his sad eyes and answered
thoughtfully: "I demand nothing from the boy be cause I have no other
idea than to give him all I have and am.  For his benefit I am seeking
something higher than the world has yet known, and I shall find it."

The lofty words silenced Frau Schimmel, but she thought to herself: "With
my few brains I am yet wiser than you.  A heartfelt, willing kiss from
your child would make you happier than all the learning that you make so
much fuss about, and a caress or a spank from you--each at the proper
time--would do little Zeno more good than all the world-improving
discoveries in search of which you embitter your days and nights."

One beautiful afternoon in June on her return from the graveyard, whither
she regularly took the boy, and where she herself carefully tended the
white roses on Bianca's grave, she found the doctor stretched on the
sofa, instead of being in the laboratory as usual, and as he sighed
heavily when she entered, she asked him respectfully what it was that
oppressed him.

At first he shook his head as if he wished to be left alone, but when
she, in spite of this, remained and he noticed that her gray eyes were