Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER XIII.

Doctor Willibrod and I had hoped that, now that their business was at an end, the burdensome guests who had so long made the superintendent's house their home, would take their leave; but our hope was to be only partially fulfilled.

"I do not wish to travel in the company of a man who has made me a beggar," said the steuerrath.

"Fudge!" said the commerzienrath, coming into the office that afternoon, in travelling dress, to bid me good-by; "he has been a beggar all his life. Would you believe it? five minutes ago he was begging from me again; he has not the money to take him home, I must advance him a hundred thalers. I gave them to him; I shall never see them again. By the way, I must see you again. Really I like you better every time I see you; you are a capital fellow."

"You will make but little capital out of me, Herr Commerzienrath."

"Make capital? Very good!" said the jovial old fellow, and poked me in the ribs. "We shall see, we shall see. Your very first movement when you leave this place must be to my house. Will soon find something for you; am planning all sorts of improvements on the estate--here the commerzienrath shut his eyes--distillery, brick-yard, turf-cutting, saw-mill--will find a place for you at once. How long have you still to be here?"

"Six years longer."

The commerzienrath puffed out his cheeks. "Whew! that is an awful time. Can I do nothing for you? Could I help you up there? A little cash in hand, eh?"

"I am greatly obliged to you, but cannot expect any advantage from your exertions."

"Pity, pity! Would have been so glad to prove my gratitude to you. You have really done me a great service. The man would have given me much trouble. Would a little money be of service to you? Speak freely. I am a man of business, and a hundred thalers or so are a trifle to me."

"If we are to part as friends, not another word of that," I said, with decision.

The commerzienrath hastily thrust back the thick pocketbook which he had half drawn out of his pocket, and for the greater security buttoned over it one button of his blue frockcoat.

"A man's free-will is his heaven. Come anyhow and bid my Hermine good-by. I believe the girl would refuse to start if you do not come to the carriage. Perhaps you will not do this either."

"Assuredly I will," I answered, and followed the commerzienrath to the space in front of the house, where already the whole family was assembled around the great travelling-carriage of the millionaire. While in his ostentatious way he was boasting of the convenience of the carriage and the beauty of the two powerful brown horses, who were lazily switching their long tails about, and at intervals bidding farewell to the company with clumsy bows and awkward phrases, Hermine was flitting from one to another, laughing, teasing, romping in rivalry with her Zerlina, that seemed to be continually in the air, and kept up the most outrageous barking. In this way she passed me two or three times, without taking the least notice of me. Suddenly some one touched my arm from behind. It was Fräulein Duff. She beckoned me, by a look, a little to one side, and said hurriedly and mysteriously:

"She loves you!"

Fräulein Duff seemed so agitated; her locks, usually so artistically arranged, fluttered to-day in such disorder about her narrow face; her water-blue eyes rolled so strangely in their large sockets--I really believed for a moment that "the good lady had quite lost her modicum of wits.

"Don't put on such a desperate look, Richard," she said.

"'From the clouds must fortune fall,
From the lap of the Immortals.'

"That is an eternal truth, which here once more is proven. She confessed it to me this morning with such passionate tears; it rent my heart; I wept with her; I might well do it, for I felt with her.

"'And I, I too was born in Arcady,
But the short spring-time brought me only tears.'"

Fräulein Duff wiped her water-blue eyes, and cast a languishing look at Doctor Snellius, who with a very mixed expression of countenance was receiving the thanks of the commerzienrath.

"Both youth and man!" she whispered:

"'The rind may have a bitter taste,

But surely not the fruit.'

"Good heavens! what have I said! You are in possession of the secret of a virgin heart. You will not profane it. And now, let us now part, Richard. One last word: Seek truly and thou shalt find! I come, I come!"

She turned away, and waving the company a farewell with her parasol, hurried to the carriage, in which the commerzienrath had already fixed himself comfortably, while Hermine held her spaniel out at the door and let it bark. Startled at Fräulein Duffs extraordinary communication, I had kept in the background; the wild little creature had not a single look for him whom, according to Fräulein Duff's report, she loved. She laughed and jested, but at the moment when the horses started, a painful spasm contracted her charming face, and she threw herself passionately into her governess's arms to hide the tears that burst from her eyes.

"Rid of these," said Doctor Snellius; "hope to-morrow we shall send the others after them."

But the doctor's hope was not fulfilled on the morrow, nor yet on the next day. Fourteen days passed, and the steuerrath and the born Baroness Kippenreiter were still the guests of the superintendent.

"I shall poison them if they don't leave soon," crowed the doctor.

"One could turn to a bear with seven senses on the spot," growled the sergeant.

It was in truth a genuine calamity that had befallen the house of the excellent man; and we three allies bemoaned it, each in his own way, but none louder and more passionately than the doctor.

"You will see," he said, "these people will take up their winter-quarters here. The house is not large, but the hedgehog knows how to make himself comfortable with the marmot; they are well cared for, and as for the friendliness of intercourse--though they care less for that--there is no lack of it. How can Humanus have the patience? He must have a Potosi at his disposal. For he suffers, very seriously suffers, under the hypocritical spaniel-like humility of this brotherly parasite, as does his angelic wife under the sharp claws and yellow teeth of the born Kippenreiter. Good heavens! that we should breathe the same air with such creatures--that we must eat from the same dish with them! What crime have we committed?"

"The born Kippenreiters would say the same thing of us."

"You want to provoke me, but you are right. Doubly right; for the born Kippenreiters not only say it but act accordingly, and forbid us, whenever they can, the air that they breathe and the dishes out of which they eat, without in the least caring whether we suffocate or starve; indeed most likely with the wish that these events may come to pass."

"A contribution to the superintendent's hammer and anvil theory," I said.

The doctor's bald crown glowed a lively red.

"Don't talk to me of this good-natured folly," he cried, in his shrillest tones. "Whoever is weak or good-natured, or both--and he most likely will be both--has been hammered by the strong and evil-disposed, as long as the world stands; and he will continue to be hammered until water runs up-hill and the lamb eats the wolf. Hammer and anvil! Old Goethe knew the world, and knew better."

"And what would you do, doctor, if some poor relations took up quarters with you, and became burdensome to you in time?"

"I? I would--that is a stupid question. I don't know what I would do. But that proves nothing--nothing at all; or at the most only that I, spite of all my rhodomontades, am only a wretched piece of anvil. And finally--yes, now I have it! We are neither relations nor connections of theirs; we have no consideration to observe, and we must drive them off."

"A happy thought, doctor!"

"That is it!" said the doctor, and hopped from one leg to other. "I am ready for anything--for anything! We must spoil their life here, embitter it, drench it with gall: in a word, make it impossible."

"But how?"

"How? You lazy mammoth! Devise your own scheme. The born Kippenreiter I take upon myself. She thinks that she has a diseased heart, because she has a bad one. She is as afraid of death as if she had tried a week's experiment in the lower regions. She shall believe me."

On the very same day, Doctor Willibrod Snellius commenced his diabolical plan. Whenever he was within hearing of the born Kippenreiter he began talking of the circulation of the blood, of veins, of arteries, of valvular defects, inflammation of the pericardium, spasm of the heart. He knew, he said, that such conversation must be wearisome to her ladyship, but he was writing a monograph on the subject, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. Indeed he could not deny that it was not entirely without a motive that he had drawn her attention precisely to this point. He could not and would not positively assert, without a previous and thorough examination, that the valves of her ladyship's heart were not performing their functions regularly; but there were certain symptoms of which probably she might have experienced one or another, and prudence was not merely the mother of wisdom, but often the bestower of, if not a long life, at least one lengthened by several years.

The gnädige was by no means a person to whom I felt an especial inclination, and yet I sometimes felt a kind of pity when I saw how the unhappy victim twisted and writhed under the knife of her tormentor. How could she escape him? As a lady who piqued herself upon her culture, she could not well avoid a scientific conversation; as a guest of the house she owed consideration to a friend of the family; and in reality this topic, which she dreaded as a child dreads goblins, had for her a frightful fascination. She turned pale as often as Doctor Willibrod entered the room, and yet fixed her small round eyes upon him with the agonizing look of the bird that sees a serpent gazing into its nest; she could not resist the attraction, and in a minute she had beckoned the fearful man to her and asked him how far he had progressed with his essay.

"It is enough to drive one mad," said Doctor Willibrod; "soon she will not be able to live without me and my tales of horror. I told her to-day of the case of a lady, exactly of her age, her mode of life, habit of body, and so forth, who, while conversing with her physician about congestions of the heart, was struck with one; she smiles upon me with pale lips, and is on the verge of fainting--I suppose she is going to ring for her carriage--and what is the result? 'You must tell me more about it to-morrow,' she says, and dismisses me with a gracious wave of her hand."

"She is sword-and-bullet-proof, doctor," I said. "You will not be rid of her so easily."

"But we must be rid of her, rid of the whole pack," cried the doctor. "I am resolved upon it as man, as friend, as physician."

I laughed, but in my heart I was entirely of the doctor's opinion. The presence of these people was a too intolerable burden for the family of the superintendent. How could I avoid seeing it, when I had so attached myself to these noble and good souls, that I had for everything that concerned them the piercing eyes of the deepest and most reverent affection? I saw how the superintendent's face wore every day a graver look; how he forced himself to answer the everlasting "Is it not so, dear brother?" or, "Is not that your opinion, dear brother?" I saw the painful contraction which passed over the beautiful pale face of the blind lady, when the harsh voice of her talkative sister-in-law smote upon her sensitive ear; I saw how Paula bore these, in addition to her other burdens, with silence and patience; but I also saw how heavy a task it was.

I was sitting one day in the office, pondering all this in my indignant heart, as I cut up a quill under pretence of making a pen, when through the window which I had left half open to admit one of the rare sunbeams, my ear caught the hateful metallic voice of the born Kippenreiter.

"I am sure you will do me this kindness, dear Paula; I certainly would not ask you, for I know how young girls are attached to their own rooms, but mine is really too triste with its perpetual outlook upon the prison-walls; and then I am afraid it is damp, especially at the present season of the year, and with my heart-complaint the least rheumatism would be the death of me. I can count upon it, dear Paula, can I not? Perhaps even to-day? That would be delightful!"

"I can hardly arrange it to-day, dear aunt; I have to-day to----"

"Well, then, dear child, to-morrow. You see I am content with anything. And then there is another thing I want to mention, and that is the wine we have at dinner. Between ourselves, it is not particularly good, and does not agree with my husband at all. He is a little spoiled in this. I know you have better in the cellar; we had some of it when we first came; did we not now?"

"Yes, aunt; but unfortunately there are only two or three bottles left, which I am keeping for my father----"

"Even if there are only two or three bottles, they are better than none. Good heavens! there's that man at the window again! One cannot take three steps here without coming across him."

These last words were probably not intended for my ear, but my sense of hearing was acute, and the voice of the gnädige very distinct in its metallic ring. That they referred to none other than myself was unquestionable; for beside the fact that I was a man, and standing just then at the window, the gnädige had stared at me with her fixed round eyes, in a very ungracious manner, and then turned sharply upon her heel.

But it made little difference to me that I displeased the gnädige, or how much I displeased her; I thought only of the poor dear girl who wiped the tears from her cheeks as she walked up the garden path alone, after her aunt had left her. In a moment I was down from my office-stool, out of the room, and had hurried to her side.

"You must not give up your room to her, Paula," I said.

"You heard, then?"

"Yes; and you must not do it. It is the only one that has a good light, and----"

"I will not be able to paint much this winter; there is too much to do."

"Do you really take it for granted that they are going to remain here all winter?"

"I know nothing to the contrary. My aunt spoke of it just now."

Paula tried to smile; but great as usually was her self-control, this time she could not succeed. Her mouth twitched painfully, and her eyes filled again with tears.

"It is only on my parents' account," she said, excusing herself. "My father just now needs rest so extremely, and you know how my mother suffers when she has to entertain them for hours at a time. But you must not give any hint of it, George; not even the least."

And she laid her finger impressively on her lips, and her great blue eyes looked up anxiously at me.

I murmured something which she probably took for acquiescence, for she gave me a friendly smile, and hastened into the house, from which resounded the shrill voice of the gnädige, who with the whole power of her lungs--which were evidently in a healthy state--was calling out of the window to the steuerrath, who was standing in the rear of the garden among the yellowing leaves on the sunny espalier, and eating one of the few peaches which the superintendent's unwearying care had won from the ungenial climate.

With long strides, betokening no good to the steuerrath, I walked up the path directly to him.

"Ah!" said he, without desisting from his occupation, "my wife has sent you, I suppose. But see for yourself if there is another decent peach on the whole espalier. And the trash is anyhow as sour as vinegar."

"Then you should not have eaten it."

"Well, at all events it is better than nothing; an official on a pension learns that lesson."

"Really!"

I accompanied this explanation with a contemptuous laugh, which rudely startled the steuerrath from the delusion that he was delighting me with his genial conversation. He looked at me with the expression of a dog who is undecided whether to fly from his enemy or seize him by the leg.

"Herr Steuerrath," I said, "I have a request to make of you."

His indecision was at an end in a moment.

"At any other time I will listen to you with pleasure," said he; "but at this moment I am rather hurried----"

And he tried to pass me, but I barred his way.

"I can tell you in three words what I have to say: you must leave this place."

"I must--what?"

"Leave this place," I repeated, and I felt the angry blood mounting to my cheeks--"and that at once; in three days at the furthest."

"Young man, I believe you have lost your senses," replied the steuerrath, making an effort to assume a dignified look, which his lips, pale with apprehension, woefully belied. "Do you know to whom you are speaking?"

"Give yourself no trouble," I said, contemptuously. "The times in which you appeared to me I don't know what awe-inspiring wonder, are long past. I have no further respect for you, not the slightest; and I will not have you stay here any longer; do you hear? I will not have it!"

"But this is unheard-of!" cried the steuerrath. "I will tell my brother what insults I am exposed to here."

"If you did that, I would----"

I could not bring myself to pronounce it, I had so long kept it sealed up in my breast. I had two more years of imprisonment for keeping it secret; it was a poisoned weapon which I was about to use against the miserable man; but I thought of the weeping face of the dear maiden, and then I looked into the face of the evil man before me, distorted with hate and rage, and I dragged out the words through my clenched teeth--"I would mention the letter which you wrote him"--I pointed in the direction of the island--"upon which he undertook his last expedition--of the letter which proves you an accomplice, yes, the chief criminal; and which would have ruined you had I not kept the secret."

The man, while I spoke, seemed to shrink into himself, as if he had trodden upon a poisonous serpent; with straining eyes he watched every movement of my hands, expecting every instant that I would carry them to my breast-pocket and produce the fatal letter. "The letter you speak of and which you have possessed yourself of by unlawful means, proves nothing," he stammered--"proves nothing at all. It is indifferent to me whether you show it to my brother, or to any one else--any one else----"

"I cannot show it to any one, for I have burned it."

The steuerrath almost bounded into the air. His fright had never given room for the thought that the letter might have been lost or destroyed. How differently the affair stood now!

A smile of defiance passed over his face, which once more began to assume its natural color.

"What are you talking of, and what do you want?" he cried, with a hoarse voice that singularly contrasted with his usual oily speech. "The devil only knows what kind of a letter it was that you saw--that you pretend to have seen. The whole affair looks exceedingly like a lie--and a very bungling one at that. Stand off, sir! don't dare to touch me, or I call for help!--and you will have to your seven years, seven years more. Do not dare to touch me, I say!"

My looks were probably threatening enough, for he had retreated before them to the wall, and squeezed himself, trembling, against the espalier. I stepped up close to him' and said in a low tone:

"I shall do you no harm, for--miserable wretch as you are--I still respect in you your two brothers; the one whom you hounded on to his death, and the other whose precious life you shall not embitter another hour. If no one else believes my word that I read and burned that letter, he will believe it--you know he will believe it. And if the morning of the third day finds you here, he shall learn whom he has so long been entertaining under his roof. You know him. He can pardon much, and does pardon much; but to be the victim of such a shameless lie as that which you have imposed upon him, upon the commerzienrath, and all the world--that he will never pardon."

The man knew that I was right; I saw it in his face, which grew absolutely sharp and thin with alarm at being thus helplessly in my hands.

And it was high time; one minute later and my victory would at least have been doubtful. For from the garden came help for the crushed one. It was the born Kippenreiter, who came calling out to us from a distance to save her two or three peaches.

A prudent general undertakes no new battle which may jeopard an already hard-won victory. I had not quailed before the wrathful looks of the steuerrath; but at sight of the yellow teeth of the born, I felt something which I should call fear, if the respect we owe to the sex could ever allow such a feeling to enter the breast of a man.

But be that as it might; when I heard the light-brown silk dress of the gnädige rustling close at hand, I considered the moment especially suitable for hastening, as rapidly as I could with politeness, along the paths strewn with dead leaves to my office, after first casting a last impressive look upon my adversary, and saluting with a silent bow his rustling reinforcement.

Would my threat prove effective?

I had given him two days respite, so the decision under all circumstances must speedily be made.

Strange enough! I was convinced that I had acted only from the most disinterested motives, and yet my soul was filled with disquiet, and my eye and ear were on the alert for any sign that might tell me what I had to hope or to fear. The next day passed--as far as I could see, all things remained as they were; Paula's room, the same in which I had lain sick, was emptied of its furniture; I saw her easel and her portfolios of sketches carried across the hall, and gnashed my teeth to see it.

But on the following morning the superintendent came into the office with an unusually grave face, and after giving me some papers, with his hand already upon the latch, turned and said:

"Tell me, George--you are quite disinterested in the matter--have you noticed anything in my behavior, or in that of any member of my family, that could give my brother or his wife reason to suppose that they are not welcome here?"

I was drawing at the time, and had just then a very delicate bit of pen-shading to do, so I could not raise my head from the drawing-board as I answered the superintendent:

"I have perceived nothing of the sort."

"I should trust not," he said, and his voice had a grieved tone. "It would give me pain, great pain, if I thought that if I thought that my brother could say, or even think, 'He cared nothing for my misfortune; he drove me away when his house was my only asylum.' For this, or very near it, is the case. His pension is very small for a man accustomed to his style of living; the compromise-money, even with our contribution, is little enough; and, besides, he has debts and must work for his living, and how was he to learn that in the wretched routine of official life? They have certainly not brightened our home--truth compels me to admit it--but he is my brother and my guest, and I would rather he were not going."

Perhaps his noble nature looked for some reassuring answer from me, but the fine lines of my bit of shading happened just then to be closer than ever, and I had to bend my head still lower over the drawing-board. He sighed deeply and left the room.

I drew a long breath as the door closed behind him, and the next moment I saw, in the black mirror of the corpulent inkstand on the office-table, my tall figure reflected in grotesque distortion, and performing, with arms and legs, movements which apparently represented a joyous dance of victory.

"You are monstrously pleased at something, it seems," said a voice behind me.

In my fright I forgot one leg which I had elevated in the air, and upon the other I made a pirouette which, had it been performed in public before connoisseurs, would have brought down the house.

Arthur afterwards became a connoisseur in these things, but he could not have been one at this time, for his face, as he threw himself into a chair, was by no means radiant with delight, and the tone of his voice was as dolorous as possible as he went on, resting his curly head upon his hand:

"To be sure, you have every reason; you have gained your point; from to-morrow you are again sole master here."

I had by this time brought my other foot down to the floor, and took occasion to plant myself firmly before my antagonist, for such I considered Arthur. But I was mistaken. Arthur had not come to pick a quarrel with me.

"I have my own reasons," he said, "for preferring that the old people should be away from here. The old man, you know, has become really disreputable since his misfortune; he sponges upon the first man he meets. By the way, I can pay you now the twenty-five you lent me the other day. Last night I had a fabulous run of luck--we had a little play at Lieutenant von Serring's quarters. Sorry I haven't the money about me, but you shall certainly have it to-morrow. What I was going to say is this: The old man carries it too far; sooner or later he would have compromised me hopelessly. The colonel watches me frightfully close. So no hostility, George! You have driven him away--don't deny it; I have it from mamma. She is furious with you; but I told her she might congratulate herself that you were so discreet and said nothing more about that business of the letter. So I did not come on this account, but merely to ask you how I stand with you."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not without some confusion.

"Let us have no quibbles about it, old fellow," said the ensign, tapping the sole of his left boot with the point of his sword, which lay across his right knee: "I have estimated you far too low. I see now that you are cock of the walk here, and I wish to be on good terms with you, not to quarrel. If uncle did not help me a little I should either have to starve or quit the service, and my colonel, moreover, would know why I can no longer visit here. You are a good fellow, and will not ruin me."

"That I certainly will not," I said.

"And I am not such a bad fellow, after all," the ensign went on. "I am a little wild, I know; but we are all so at our years, and so would you be if you had the chance, which you certainly have not in this cursed hole. But people can always get along with me, and they are all fond of me here: my uncle, my aunt, the boys, and----"

Arthur took his left foot from his right knee, and said:

"Look here, George; I would not tell you if I did not have the fullest confidence in your honor, notwithstanding--in short, I ask your word of honor that you will say nothing about it. I fancy that--but, as I said, you must keep it a secret--I fancy that I am not quite indifferent to my pretty cousin: she said as much to me yesterday, and even if she had not----"

And the ensign twisted the blackish down on his lip, and looked around the room apparently for a looking-glass, but there was none there. His only substitute would have been the great inkstand, which at this moment I would most joyfully have dashed to ten thousand pieces against his pretty head.

"Arthur!" cried Paula's voice in the garden; "Arthur!"

The ensign gave me a look that seemed to say: Do you see now what a lucky dog I am? and ran out of the door, which he neglected to shut after him.

I remained quite stupefied, and stared through the open garden-door at the long walk which they were pacing up and down, she walking in her usual composed manner, and he fluttering about her. Once they stood still; she looked at him, and he apparently in protestation, laid his hand upon his breast.

An indescribable sense of pain entered my bosom. I knew this feeling well; I had once before experienced it, at the moment when I heard that Constance belonged to another; but it was not then so poignant as now. I could have buried my face in my hands and wept like a child. I did not for a moment think that Arthur very probably lied to me or to himself, and perhaps both. His confidence, Paula's call, the walk in the garden, always empty at this hour--all came in such rapid succession, and agreed so well, that it was but too probable. And Arthur was such a desperately handsome fellow, and could be so amiable when he chose--I ought to know that best, I who had so dearly loved him! And had not Paula been changed towards me ever since he had been in the house? Was she not more reserved--less communicative? I had noticed it for some time; it had pained me before I knew what had produced this change--now I knew it!

Vanity of vanities! What claims had I? To what could I pretend, an outcast, condemned to long years of imprisonment?

My head sank upon my breast. I humbled myself deep in the dust before the fair and dear maiden, who ever floated before me like a heavenly being.

Then I sprang up indignant. Could she be all that I worshipped her for, if she loved this man?

Here was a terrible contradiction which apparently was easy to solve, and which I infallibly would have solved, or rather would have altogether escaped, had I been a grain wiser or more vain; but in which, as I was neither wise nor vain, I involved myself for years.

"Signs and wonders are coming to pass," said Doctor Willibrod, rushing breathlessly into my cell one evening, where I sat in dejected meditation before the stove, and watched the sparks that ran up and down the glowing plates. "Signs and wonders! They are about to strike their tents and shake off the dust from their feet. Hosanna!"

The doctor threw himself into a chair and wiped his bald scalp, upon which the drops of perspiration were standing.

"Heaven is mighty in the weak," he went on in a tone in which his internal excitement was perceptible. "Who would have believed that a little David like myself would be able to pierce the brazen skull of this Goliath of shamelessness; and yet such is the fact! The gnädige can endure the air here no longer; she made the last trial when she moved into Paula's chamber. The trial did not succeed, and she must go. Hosanna in the highest!"

"Did she tell you so herself?"

"She did indeed; and her spouse confirmed it, and spoke of hypochondriacal notions to which even the most sensible women are subject, and to which a gallant husband must make some concessions. Finally he drew me on one side, and on the score of temporary deficiency of funds, borrowed a hundred thalers from me to enable him to start at once."

"You will never see them again."

"The hundred, or the distinguished travellers?"

"Neither."

"Pleasant journey to them, and may they never cross our path again!"

The doctor sank into a devout silence; I think that something like a hymn of praise arose from his heart.

"Do you know, they are going!" resounded a deep voice behind us. It was the sergeant, who came in with a lighted lamp.

"Carriage to be ordered at Hopp's livery-stable to-morrow morning at the stroke of nine," continued the veteran. "Eight would not be too soon, one would think."

And he joyously rubbed his hands, and declared that he felt like a bear that itched in all his seven senses. But suddenly the laughter vanished from the thousand wrinkles of his face, and leaning over the back of the doctor's chair he said in a suppressed voice:

"Now we must drive away the young one, doctor; clean away! the brood is worse than the old ones, in my opinion."

"In my opinion too," said Doctor Snellius, springing up. "I have given the old ones their dismissal; you must do it for the youngster, mammoth; by heaven must you!"

I made no answer; my gaze was fixed on the glowing plate, but I saw it as through a veil which had somehow fallen over my eyes.