"My good madam," replied the painter in his softest tone, "for God's sake tell me who and where is the person who was waiting for the mail at your hotel."
"Ha! ha!" laughed the hostess, considerably mollified by the madam and the hotel. "The mad Italian musician, the clarinet fellow? Why, I took you for him at first, and wondered what brought him back, for he started as soon as the mail left the door. He'd have done better to have got into it, with a dark night and a long road before him. Ha! ha! He's mad, to be sure."
"His name! His name!" cried Solling, impatiently.
"His name? How can I recollect his outlandish name? Fol—Vol——"
"Voltojo!" cried the painter.
"Voltojo! yes, that's it. Ha! ha! What a name!"
"It is he!" cried Solling, and without another word dashed off full speed along the road he had just come. He kept in the middle of the causeway, straining his eyes to see into the darkness on either side of him, and wondering how it was he had not met the object of his search as he came to the village. He ran on, occasionally taking trees and fingerposts for men, and cursing his ill luck when he saw his mistake. The sweat poured down his face in streams, and his knees began to knock together with fatigue. Suddenly he struck his foot against a stone lying in the road, and fell, cutting his forehead severely upon some pebbles. The sharp pain drew a cry from him, and a man who had been lying on the grass at the roadside, sprang up and hastened to his assistance. At that moment a flash of summer lightning lit up the road.
"Bernard! Bernard!" cried the painter, throwing his arms round the stranger's neck. It was his brother.
Bernard started back with a cry of horror.
"Albert!" he exclaimed in a hollow voice, "Cannot your spirit rest? Do you rise from the grave to persecute me?"