“You are as rosy as a carnation.  Will you please bring me up some coffee and light food as soon as you get the hot water?  My daughter and I will probably start before your regular breakfast-hour.”

The girl seemed vexed by this news, for she bit her lip, but forcing a smile, she continued her journey to the kitchen.  No one else seemed afoot in the large and rambling house, through which the Jew sent searching looks as he took the turn to the yard.  The ostler received him with a grin, and the dog with friendly wags of the stub tail.

“We shall not use the chaise as we purposed, Karl,” said the Jew.  “At your breakfast-time, my daughter will go out alone for an airing, with you or your fellow to drive.  The young gentleman whom you welcomed is quite unfit for a journey before at least three days are over.  Meanwhile, not an incautious word that will betray where he took shelter.  In these three days,” he added to himself, “we shall know how the major fares.  Unfortunately, his race have iron constitutions.”

This was said with a sorrow rare in one of a people who seldom deplore the survival of a brother man.

Daniels was right in his fear:  the student needed repose, and only the most vigorous counter measures drove off an attack of fever.  Rebecca was his nurse in the same devoted and intelligent manner as her father was his physician, but as he was on the margin of delirium half the time, he saw her like one in a vision.

His antagonist, Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed.  After a cursory treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper’s lodge, he was removed, wrapped in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius was on foot again, the officer was outdoors—­a little pale, but seemingly none the worse for his horrible adventure.

He took up his own case.  Fraulein von Vieradlers had already tired of her assay in elevating the stage in a social point of view.  She had excited the adoration of the eccentric Marchioness de Latour-lagneau, a very old lady of fortune, who had the habit of conceiving singular fancies.  This lady engaged the cantatrice as a “noble companion,” and she hurried off with her into Italy.  So the story ran, and added that her manager found that the Vieradlers promptly repudiated any kinship with her when he talked of their paying the forfeit money.  He had thereupon endeavored to win back La Belle Stamboulane to his deserted stage, but she was obdurate, and the beer flowed flat in the double absence of stars inimitable.

The major, whose body, reeking with arnica and iodine, reminded him at every step of the drubbing he owed to the civilian, concentrated his searches therefore to discover him.  He was sure that he had not left the town by the ordinary channels, but, as time passed, and the week ended fruitlessly, he was inclined to believe that the fiend which befriended Baboushka had also shielded Claudius with his wing.