The cloud had gathered and the heavens were darkened. The Professor once more took up the treatise of his ungracious colleague. It was as if a mountain-lion, wildly shaking his mane, had dashed in upon the prey of a lynx or fox, and wresting the booty from the clutches of the weaker animal, ignominiously routed him.
Twice Ilse called her husband to dinner in vain; when she approached his chair anxiously she saw a disturbed countenance. "I cannot eat," he said, abruptly; "send over and ask Fritz to come here directly."
Ilse, alarmed, sent for their neighbor and seated herself in the Professor's room, following him with her eyes as he strode up and down. "What has so excited you, Felix?" she asked, anxiously.
"I beg of you, dear wife, to dine without me to-day," he said, continuing his rapid strides.
The Doctor entered hastily. "The fragment is not from a manuscript of Tacitus," said the Professor, to his friend.
"Vivat Bachhuber!" replied he, while still at the door, waving his hat.
"There is no reason to rejoice," interrupted the Professor, gloomily; "the fragment, wherever it may have come from, contains a passage of Tacitus."
"It must have come from some place," said the Doctor.
"No," cried the Professor, loudly; "the whole is a forgery. The upper part of the text contains words put together at random and the attempts of the editor to bring them into a rational connection are not happy. The lower portion of the so-called fragment has been transcribed from one of the old fathers, who has introduced a hitherto unobserved sentence of Tacitus. The forger has written certain words of this quotation under one another on the parchment strip, regularly omitting the words lying between. This cannot be doubted."
He led the Doctor, who now looked as much perplexed as himself, to his books, and demonstrated to him the correctness of his statement.