"Ah, my dear friend," sighed Herr Steinwurm, "science has had a bitter disappointment! You remember the vault of the Frauenkirche, and the inscription on that stone?"
"I should rather think I do," said Adalbert, drily; "the stone has laid its inscription on me somewhat severely."
"Well, my dear friend, it is a sad fact that that fall has mutilated the inscription beyond all hope of recognition. I do not wish to reproach you for your part in the unfortunate accident, but science, alas! has to bewail a heavy loss."
"So has her victim," said Adalbert, in a tone of irony quite new in him.
"Victim of science! Glorious title! " mused Steinwurm aloud.
"If you are anxious to earn the glory of the title," said Adalbert, with a gleam of his old humour, "stay here and explore the mountains. There are precipices in plenty, and there is, besides, a bottomless hole in the forest, which we are searching for; and when it is found we shall have to let down a man on a rope to sound it. I think you would be the very man for that, my dear Steinwurm; your stature and your weight point you out as the appropriate instrument."
"Thank you," said Steinwurm, a little hurriedly.
The programme did not sound reassuring.
"I should hardly feel justified. I – I – you see, I am a family man."
" So am I," said Adalbert.
"Yes – but, do you know, I am not particularly sure of my legs in mountain-climbing; a little weakness in the knees ever since my childhood. Where – where is your charming daughter?" burst out
the unfortunate historian, as a desperate transition on to safer ground. He was answered by Dr Komers, who, sitting at a little distance, had taken no part in the discussion. It was two days since Vincenz, having wound up the small affairs of Draskócs, and seen Ascelinde's guardian laid to rest, had returned to the Hercules Valley. "Fräulein Mohr has gone out to meet her brother," he said, in reply to Herr Steinwurm's question.
"Oh, has she?" answered Kurt's voice from the doorway; "her brother was not aware of the fact."
"Did you not meet your sister?" asked the lawyer; "she went up the hillside to look for you."
"Never met anybody," said Kurt, lighting a cigar. "I never went to the hill at all: I have been down to the river to see if there were no geologists to pick out of it: they were not walking over-straight when I saw them last."
And having taken place on a chair, and stretched his legs on another, Kurt proceeded to make himself comfortable with his cigar and the paper.
Dr Komers, without further remark, quietly left the room.
Kurt continued to read his paper, and the two historians talked history, and Ascelinde, who had left her bed some days ago, occasionally wandered into the room and out of it again, looking like a ghost of her former self. And meanwhile the dusk began to fall, and neither Gretchen nor Dr Komers had yet returned.
At the moment when Kurt was lighting his cigar and luxuriously distributing his person between two chairs, Gretchen had already reached some distance from home; and under the delusion that her brother must be in advance, was
