After reading the treatise the friends sat gloomy and thoughtful. At last the Doctor exclaimed:
"How unfriendly to conceal this from you, and yet to call upon you for assistance."
"That signifies little," replied the Professor. "But I cannot approve of the work itself; hypercritical acuteness is applied to an uncertain matter, and objections might be made against much that he has restored and supposed. But why do you not say openly what interests us both much more than the mistakes of a whimsical man? We are on the track of a manuscript of Tacitus, and here we find a fragment of such a manuscript, which has been cut up by a bookbinder after the Thirty Years' War. The gain which might accrue to our knowledge from this little fragment is so insignificant that it would not pay for the energy expended on it, being a matter of indifference to all the world except to us. For, my friend, if a manuscript of Tacitus has really been cut into such strips, it is in all probability the same which we have been in search of. What is the result?" he added, bitterly. "We free ourselves from a dreamy vision which has perhaps too long made fools of us."
"How can this parchment be a part of the manuscript of our friend Bachhuber?" asked the Doctor; "many prayers have been written here over the old text."
"Who can assure us that the monks of Rossau have not written their spiritual aspirations over at least some faded sheets? It is not usual, but nevertheless possible."
"Above all, you must see Struvelius's parchment strip yourself," said the Doctor, decidedly. "An accurate examination may explain much."
"It is not agreeable to me to speak to him about it, yet I shall do so to-morrow."
The day following the Professor entered the room of his colleague Struvelius more composedly.
"You can imagine!" he began, "that I have read your treatise with especial interest. After what I have communicated to you concerning an unknown manuscript of Tacitus, you must perceive that our prospect of discovering this manuscript is very much diminished, if the strip of parchment has been cut from the leaves of a Tacitus which was preserved in Germany two hundred years ago."
"If it has been cut?" repeated Struvelius, sharply. "It has been cut from it. And what you have communicated to me about this concealed treasure at Rossau was very indefinite and I am not of the opinion that much value is to be attached to it. If, in reality, there was a manuscript of Tacitus in existence there, it has undoubtedly been cut up, and this ends the question."