"Thank you, but I never drink before seeing a patient."

"What! not even one little glass?"

"Not the smallest glass you could offer me."

He opened his eyes wide and looked with astonishment at his wife.

"The doctor is right," she said. "I am quite of his opinion. I prefer
to drink with my meat, and to take a glass of cognac afterwards. That
is what the ladies do in France. Cognac is more fashionable than
kirschwasser!"

Marie Lagoutte had hardly finished with her dissertation when Sperver
opened the door quietly and beckoned me to follow him.

I bowed to the "honourable company," and as I was entering the passage
I could hear that lady saying to her husband--

"That is a nice young man. He would have made a good-looking soldier."

Sperver looked uneasy, but said nothing. I was full of my own thoughts.

A few steps under the darkling vaults of Nideck completely effaced from
my memory the queer figures of Tobias and Marie Lagoutte, poor harmless
creatures, existing like bats under the mighty wing of the vulture.

Soon Gideon brought me into a sumptuous apartment hung with
violet-coloured velvet, relieved with gold. A bronze lamp stood in a