A Ratisbon colleague, whom he found with the sufferers, was to superintend the treatment which he prescribed.

He had left the house a short time before.  Master Appenzelder, Wolf heard from the choir boys, was now with the invalids, and the knight set off to inquire about them at once.

He had forbidden the idle young singers who wanted to go with him to follow, but one had secretly slipped after, and, in one of the dark corridors of the big house, full of nooks and corners, he suddenly heard a voice call his name.  Ere he was aware of it, little Hannibal Melas, a young Maltese in the boy choir, whose silent, reserved nature had obtained for him from the others the nickname Tartaruga, the tortoise, seized his right hand in both his own.

It was done with evident excitement, and his voice sounded eagerly urgent as he exclaimed: 

“I fix my last hope on you, Sir Knight, for you see there is scarcely one of the others who would not have an intercessor.  But I!  Who would trouble himself about me?  Yet, if you would only put in a good word, my time would surely come now.”

“Your time?” asked Wolf in astonishment; but the little fellow eagerly continued: 

“Yes, indeed!  What Johann of Cologne or at least what Benevenuto can do, I can trust myself to do too.  The master need only try it with me, and, now that both are ill, put me in place of one or the other.”

Wolf, who knew what each individual chorister could do, shook his head, and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by exclaiming, in tones of passionate lamentation: 

“So you are the same?  The master having begun it, all misjudge and crush me!  Instead of giving me an opportunity to show what I can do in a solo part, I am forced back into the crowd.  My best work disappears in the chorus.  And yet, Sir Wolf, in spite of all, I heard the master’s own lips say in Brussels—­I wasn’t listening—­that he had never heard what lends a woman’s voice its greatest charm come so softly and tenderly from the throat of a boy.  Those are his own words.  He will not deny them, for at least he is honest.  What is to become of the singing without Johann and Benevenuto?  But if they would try me, and at least trust a part of Bosco’s music to me—­”

Here he stopped, for Master Appenzelder was just coming from the door of the sick-room into the corridor; but Wolf, with a playful gesture, thrust his fingers through the lad’s bushy coal-black hair, turned him in the direction from which he came, and called after him, “Your cause is in good hands, you little fellow with the big name.”

Then, laying his hand on the arm of the deeply troubled musician, and pointing to the boy who was trotting, full of hope, down the corridor, he said:  “‘Hannibal ante portas!’ A cry of distress that is full of terror; but the Maltese Hannibal who is vanishing yonder gave me an idea which will put an end to your trouble, my dear Maestro.  The sooner the two poisoned lads recover the better, of course; yet the Benedictio Mensae need not remain unsung on account of their heedlessness, for little Hannibal showed me the best substitute.”