"Have you a litter?" he asked. "You can make three thalers by putting the lady on it and carrying her a hundred paces to a house where she will be received. I'll answer for the rest, and if the police should afterwards find out that you didn't give them notice of the affair, I'll take all the responsibility. But make haste, before it's too late!--There, lay her flat on her back and cover her with this cloak. And now forward--"
Not another word was spoken. His hasty, imperious manner, the promised reward and the prospect of getting rid of the disagreeable business, urged the sailors to the utmost speed. Two stout men lifted the motionless figure on a flat frame, which was used for unloading baskets of fruit, and fastened her firmly on it with a broad girdle. Her clothes and hair were still dripping with water, as she was raised and carefully carried up the steps of the landing. Then the bearers moved swiftly forward with their burden, while the others remained on the boats dividing the money among them. Mohr was the only one who followed the bier. He had not trusted himself to touch the lifeless body, but as it was raised he bent over the litter to keep it steady, and had brushed her hand with his cheek; its icy coldness froze the blood in his veins.
He ordered the bearers to stop before the artist's little house, but was obliged to ring the bell at the gate of the timber-yard a long time, before any one moved. How terribly long the moments were! Who could tell whether a hundred seconds more or less might not decide whether that motionless breast would ever again be heaved by the breath of life?
At last a door behind the wood pile opened, a flickering light appeared, and the zaunkönig's voice was heard asking: "what's the matter?" A very few words were enough to urge the kind-hearted little man to breathless haste. His trembling hands instantly opened the little door beside the gate, and without another syllable being uttered, the sad procession moved along the dark path to the little house.
CHAPTER X.
At this same late hour the boudoir of the singer, whose acquaintance we made at the Pagoda, looked very bright and cheerful. A candelabrum with five candles was burning on the daintily spread table, at which the gay beauty sat with her friend, resting on her laurels after the first night of a new opera.
"You were charming to-night, Adèle," said Marquard, as he pushed back a plate filled with oyster shells and rose to light a cigar at the candelabrum. "Really, loveliest of witches, you improve in each new part, and I shan't be surprised if one day you outgrow even me. But you've one talent that compels my highest esteem: I admire it even more than your acting, your singing, or the black art by which you make a whole audience madly in love with you."
"And that is?"
"Your talent for eating oysters. You laugh, Adelina. But I'm perfectly serious, believe me. I would engage to describe the mind and heart of any woman with whom I had been ten minutes without any other knowledge of her than eating oysters together, and never make a mistake--with the sole stipulation that it's not her first essay in the noble art, when even the most gifted person may set about it awkwardly."
"Well, and wherein does my merit in this direction consist?"