CHAPTER XXVII
THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony from "a bad burn." Those were the words. For in phlogistic, as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers. His housekeeper applied some old woman's remedy mild as milk. He submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to him, meditated instant flight from the township.
Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire, and honest endeavour, to perjure himself, were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor indeed thought possible.
He had spoken the truth.
And in an affidavit!
The officers, on reaching the Silver Lion, found the birds were flown.
They went down to the river, and, from intelligence they received there started up the bank in hot pursuit.
This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear, and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. "That old fellow," said he, "went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers here: the bailiff is his friend: in five minutes we shall lie in a dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity: are you strong enough to hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to lie down in a boat instead of a bed: and what is the odds?"
"The odds? Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for Rome: for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen: and then we shall lie in the boat, but on the Rhine, the famous Rhine: the cool, refreshing Rhine. I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little hop-o'-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!"