"A newspaper?"
"Yes! I received it myself. The Bayonet?"
"Oh yes, I remember now. I will take a look at it."
"Yes, please do. There may be some things in it that will interest you. Ha, ha, ha!" And he laid his hand on the Doctor's shoulder and gazed meaningly at him.
Finally he asked the head physician himself.
"Yes, yes," answered he, "certainly I read that paper, my dear Captain. A curious thing. I made inquiries immediately, but the editors were not to be found, in spite of all my pains. They do not seem to be in existence. Or else they are gone. I scarcely know what to think of the paper, my dear Captain."
Then for a few days Michael Petroff would wander disconsolately about, and his depression might even bring on melancholia or frenzy. But after a few days he would always regain his cheerful spirits. He would greet his friends, and apologize for his disagreeable behavior. And immediately he would begin to plan out another newspaper. This time it must surely be a success. Take care. Dr. März!
Such was Michael Petroff, Captain in the Russian army.
Friend Engelhardt, whom Michael Petroff and the lawyer were going to visit, was a gray-haired man about fifty years old, who had been only a year in Dr. März's sanatorium. He was a shoemaker by trade and had sat all his life, year in, year out, under his glass globe of water,[A] tapping away on leather. He was unmarried, lived much alone and since he was industrious and economical, he had laid up a comfortable little property. And there he sat under his glass globe and nothing whatever happened. But gradually the globe began to look more and more strange to him. It flashed upon him and dazzled him, so that he sometimes felt for a moment a certain unacknowledged fear of it. It seemed to grow bigger and bigger, until at last the time came when Engelhardt's hair stood on end with horror—
[Footnote A: German shoemakers used a glass globe full of water placed in front of their lamp, to concentrate the light upon their work.]