“No, your honor, this gentleman arrived only an hour ago, and he will stay here to-night.” said the head waiter.
“Oh, what a surprise,” said the traveller, starting up. “Come, please to conduct me at once to this gentleman.”
And, with impatient haste, he ran to the door, which the head waiter opened to him. But upon the threshold he suddenly stopped and seemed to pause.
“Pray wait for me here in this hall; I shall follow you immediately,” he said, as he returned to his room, closed its door, and hastened to the table in order to put his gold and his papers into the casket and to lock it.
In the mean while, the traveller in the small room of the second floor had finished his frugal meal, and was now occupied with making up his account and entering the little travelling expenses of the last few days into his diary.
“It is after all an expensive journey,” he muttered to himself; “I shall hardly have a few hundred florins left on my arrival at Berlin. It is true the first quarter of my salary will at once be paid to me, but one-half of it I have already assigned to my creditors, and the other half will scarcely suffice to furnish decently a few rooms. Oh, how much are those to be envied, the freedom and cheerfulness of whose minds are never disturbed by financial troubles!”
A loud knock at the door interrupted him; he hastened to put back his money into his pocket-book, when the door was hastily opened and the stranger of the first story appeared in it with a smiling countenance.
“Frederick Gentz!” exclaimed the owner of the room, in joyful surprise.
“Johannes Muller!” smilingly exclaimed the other, running up to him with outstretched arms, and tenderly embracing the little man, the great historian. “What good fortune for me, my friend, that I put up at this hotel, where I was to have the pleasure of meeting you! Accidentally I found in the hotel register your name, and at once I rushed to welcome you.”
“And by coming you afford to my heart a true joy,” tenderly said Johannes Muller, “for nothing can afford a greater joy than the unexpected meeting with a beloved and esteemed friend, and you know you are both to me.”