Steven sat up straight, and even at that moment there was an uproar. Geiger-Hans, creeping round the table like a cat, had fallen silently upon the student and was paralyzing, with a grasp of steel, the hand that held the letter.
The Jurist bellowed as if the executioner were already upon him, and Mossy-Head, waking up, shouted: "Treachery!" while, as if the clamour had given the finishing touch to his instability, the Theologian and the once more empty can fell in a heap on the floor. The Senior flung his drunken bulk blindly against the fiddler. Steven leaped from the couch.
Even with one hand (his left arm was still weak), anything so intoxicated was easily disposed of. He picked the "Sword of the conspiracy" off Geiger-Hans, who thereupon, finding himself free to deal with "the Brain," possessed himself at once of the letter. The musician's thin cheeks were faintly touched with scarlet, and his nostrils worked with quick breathing; otherwise he seemed unmoved. Steven, therefore, was all the more astonished to hear him exclaim with utmost disgust, utmost scorn and anger:
"Palsambleu! but I am weary of this! Drunken swine! Out with them to some sty! Roll your fellow forth, count, and down the stairs. If your shoulder smarts, you have sound legs at least ... and riding-boots!"
The wine, which had seemed so long merely to stimulate him, here suddenly took melting effect upon the student of law. He twisted in the fiddler's grasp, flung both his arms round his neck, and, embracing him with the ejaculation: "O thou dear, ancient one!" showed an instant inclination to slumber on his shoulder.
"Pah!" exclaimed Geiger-Hans, and disengaged himself with what seemed to Steven surprising vindictiveness. He then trundled his man into the passage. The door of an empty bedroom, flooded with moonlight, stood suggestively open; here he cast the creature from him; threw sword, scabbard and pipe on top of the grunting body.
Steven, in perfect gravity, followed his friend's example; but, with more mercy, deposited his burden on the billows of the feather bed.
"There is yet another," quoth the fiddler, dusting his hands. Disgust was upon him. He was Geiger-Hans no longer, but a grand seigneur with a vengeance, offended in all his Versailles refinement. He led Steven back into the room. "We shall have to carry the hog. Take you his feet, while I his greasy poll."
The Theologian had not even a grunt. They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with a certain effect of symmetry, like fish on a slab.
