SENDEN.  He lies abominably!

[Starts forward.]

ADELAIDE (holding him back).  Be still!  I believe there is some truth to the story.

PIEPENBRINK.  Well now, it was very fine of him to save your life; but that kind of thing often happens.

MRS. PIEPENBRINK.  Do tell us about it, Doctor!

BOLZ.  The little affair is like a hundred others and would not interest me at all, had I not been through it myself.  Picture to yourself an old house.  I am a student living on the third floor.  In the house opposite me lives a young scholar; we do not know each other.  At dead of night I am awakened by a great noise and a strange crackling under me.  If it were mice, they must have been having a torchlight procession for the room was brilliantly illuminated.  I rush to the window, the bright flame from the story under me leaps up to where I stand.  My window-panes burst about my head, and a vile cloud of smoke rushes in on me.  There being no great pleasure under the circumstances in leaning out of the window, I rush to the door and throw it open.  The stairs, too, cannot resist the mean impulse peculiar to old wood, they are all ablaze.  Up three flights of stairs and no exit!  I gave myself up for lost.  Half unconscious I hurried back to the window.  I heard the cries from the street, “A man! a man!  This way with the ladder!” A ladder was set up.  In an instant it began to smoke and to burn like tinder.  It was dragged away.  Then streams of water from all the engines hissed in the flames beneath me.  Distinctly I could hear each separate stream striking the glowing wall.  A fresh ladder was put up; below there was deathly silence and you can imagine that I, too, had no desire to make much of a commotion in my fiery furnace.  “It can’t be done,” cried the people below.  Then a full, rich voice rang out:  “Raise the ladder higher!” Do you know, I felt instantly that this was the voice of my rescuer.  “Hurry!” cried those below.  Then a fresh cloud of vapor penetrated the room.  I had had my share of the thick smoke, and lay prostrate on the ground by the window.

MRS. PIEPENBRINK.  Poor Doctor Bolz!

PIEPENBRINK (eagerly).  Go on!

[SENDEN starts forward.]

ADELAIDE (holding him back).  Please, let him finish, the story is true!

BOLZ.  Then a man’s hand seizes my neck.  A rope is wound round me under the arms, and a strong wrist raises me from the ground.  A moment later I was on the ladder, half dragged, half carried; with shirt aflame, and unconscious, I reached the pavement.—­I awoke in the room of the young scholar.  Save for a few slight burns, I had brought nothing with me over into the new apartment; all my belongings were burned.  The stranger nursed me and cared for me like a brother.  Not until I was able to go out again did I learn that this scholar was the same man who had paid his visit to me that night on the ladder.  You see the man has his heart in the right spot, and that’s why I wish him now to become member of Parliament, and why I could do for him what I would not do for myself; for him I could electioneer, intrigue, or make fools of honest people.  That man is Professor Oldendorf.