"Just about," answered Marie Lagoutte, who never took her eyes off me. Sperver noticed this.
"Let me present to you my foster-son, Monsieur de la Roche, from Tübingen," he said proudly. "Things will change now in the Castle, Master Tobie; now that Gaston has come, this cursed malady will be put to flight. If we could only have found him out sooner! However, better late than never."
Marie Lagoutte was still watching me, and the examination seemed to satisfy her, for, turning to the majordomo, "Come, come, Monsieur Offenloch! Stir yourself," she said; "offer monsieur the doctor a chair! You sit there with your mouth open like a great carp!"
With these words, the good woman sprang up as though moved by a spring, and came to help me off with my greatcoat.
"Permit me, monsieur."
"You are very good, my dear woman."
"Hand it to me, monsieur. Such weather! Ah, monsieur, what a country this is!"
"So our master is neither better nor worse," continued Sperver, shaking the snow from his cap. "We are here in time. Ho! Kasper! Kasper!"
A little man with a drooping shoulder, indicating a partial paralysis of his frame, and a face liberally sprinkled with freckles, came out of the chimney-corner.
"Here I am."