“Ke—­keep off!  Keep off!  My God!  Raoul, he has insulted me!” He made a miserable show of drawing a weapon.  “No man may insult me and live!  If you are a man, Professor Frowenfeld, you will defend yourself!”

Frowenfeld lost his temper, but his hasty reply was drowned by Raoul’s vehement speech.

“’Tis not de trute!” cried Raoul.  “He try to save you from hell-’n’-damnation w’en ’e h-ought to give you a good cuss’n!”—­and in the ecstasy of his anger burst into tears.

Frowenfeld, in an agony of annoyance, waved him away and he disappeared, shutting the door.

Agricola, moved far more from within than from without, had sunk into a chair under the shelves.  His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the other his knee, and both trembled violently.  As Frowenfeld, with every demonstration of beseeching kindness, began to speak, he lifted his eyes and said, piteously: 

“Stop!  Stop!”

“Citizen Fusilier, it is you who must stop.  Stop before God Almighty stops you, I beg you.  I do not presume to rebuke you.  I know you want a clear record.  I know it better to-day than I ever did before.  Citizen Fusilier, I honor your intentions—­”

Agricola roused a little and looked up with a miserable attempt at his habitual patronizing smile.

“H-my dear boy, I overlook”—­but he met in

Frowenfeld’s eyes a spirit so superior to his dissimulation that the smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory and apologetic distress.  He reached up an arm.

“I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error”—­his eyes quailed and dropped to the floor—­“but I—­your arm, my dear Joseph; age is creeping upon me.”  He rose to his feet.  “I am feeling really indisposed to-day—­not at all bright; my solicitude for you, my dear b—­”

He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the apothecary, moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the table stumbled into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him.  He folded his arms on the edge of the board and rested his forehead on them, while Frowenfeld sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew paper and pen across the table and wrote.

“Are you writing something, Professor?” asked the old man, without stirring.  His staff tumbled to the floor.  The apothecary’s answer was a low, preoccupied one.  Two or three times over he wrote and rejected what he had written.

Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid the writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and waited.

After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to conceal his anguish under a smile.

“I have a sad headache.”

He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen which Frowenfeld extended toward him.

“What can I do for you, Professor?  Sign something?  There is nothing I would not do for Professor Frowenfeld.  What have you written, eh?”