"What, another rival?" he exclaimed. "Now, by the mass one would think Estelle was the only fair maiden on the whole frontier. Out of pity for the rest of her sex I shall have to bind her suddenly in the bonds of Hymen, for while she is free the young men will sigh after no other beauty, and other maids must pine in neglect."
"You flatter yourself," said I. "Give me but a chance, and I will whisper a lay of love in the fair beauty's ear that will obliterate the image you have been engraving on her heart. She has listened to you, no other splendid fellow being by, but when I enter the lists look well to your seat in her affections, for I am no timid knight when a fair hand or smile is to be won."
"Come on," cried he, laughing, "I scorn to break lance with any other knight. The lists shall be free to you, the fair Estelle shall be the prize, and I dare you to a tilt at Cupid's tourney."
With this challenge he departed, and as his yet unwearied steeds bore him away, I could hear his laugh of conscious triumph mingling with the music of his horses' bells.
After a troubled sleep that day, I awoke to a consciousness of suffering. I had lost my appetite, was troubled with vertigo, and obstructed breathing, which were sure indications that the sudden change from heated rooms to the clear, cold air, sweeping over the ice-bound river, had given me a severe influenza. My promise of a tilt with Victor, or participation in further festivity, appeared abrogated, for a time at least. I kept my bed during the day, and at night applied the usual restoratives. Sleep visited my pillow, but it was of that unrefreshing character which follows disease. I tossed upon my couch in troubled dreams, amid which I fancied myself a knight of the olden time, fighting in the lists for a wreath or glove from a tourney queen. In the contest I was conscious of being overthrown, and raised myself up from the inglorious earth upon which I had been rolled, a bruised knight from head to heel. When I awoke in the morning the soreness of every joint made me half think, for a moment, that I had suffered some injury while in sleeping unconsciousness; but, waking recollection assigned a natural cause, and I bowed my fevered head to the punishment of my imprudence. An old and dignified physician was summoned to my bed-side, who felt my pulse, ordered confinement to my room, and the swallowing of a horrible looking potion, which nearly filled a common-sized tumbler. A few days care, he said, would restore me, and with his own hands he mixed my dose, placed it beside me upon a table, and departed. I venerate a kind and skillful physician; but, like all the rest of the human family, his nauseous doses I abhor. I looked at the one before me until, in imagination, I tasted its ingredients. In my fevered vision the vessel grew into a monster goblet, and soon after it assumed the shape of a huge glass tun. Methought I commenced swallowing, fearful that if I longer hesitated it would grow more vast, and then it seemed as if the dose would never be exhausted, and that my body would not contain the whole of the dreadful compound. I dropped off again from this half-dreamy state into the oblivion of deep sleep, and remained unconscious of every thing until awoke in the evening by the chiming of bells beneath my window. I had scarcely changed my position before Victor, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, walked into my room.
"Why, my dear fellow," cried he, on seeing me nestled beneath the cover, with a towel round my head by way of a night-cap, "what is all this? Nothing serious, I hope?"
"Oh no," answered I, "only sore bones, and an embargo on the respiratory organs. That mixture"—calling his attention to the tumbler—"will no doubt set all right again."
"Pah!" he exclaimed, twisting his face as if he had tasted it, "I hope you don't resort to such restoratives."
"So goes the doctor's orders," said I.
"Oh, a pest on his drugs," says Victor. "Why didn't you call me in? I'm worth a dozen regular practitioners in such cases, especially where I am the patient. Come, up and dress, and while you are about it I will empty this potion out of the window, we will then take a seat behind the 'tinklers,' and before the night is over, I will put you through a course of exercise which has won more practice among the young than ever the wisest practitioner has been able to obtain for his most skillfully concocted healing draughts."