fellow travellers, if he really wanted anything. She wanted something of
them all the time, she wanted their conversation and their companionship;
but in her ignorance of the social arts she was thrown mainly upon the
compassion of the chambermaids. She kept these talking as long as she
could detain them in her rooms; and often fed them candy (which she ate
herself with childish greed) to bribe them to further delays. If she was
staying some days in a hotel, she sent for the house-keeper, and made all
she could of her as a listener, and as soon as she settled herself for a
week, she asked who was the best doctor in the place. With doctors she
had no reserves, and she poured out upon them the history of her diseases
and symptoms in an inexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and
misgiving, which was by no means affected by her profound and
inexpugnable ignorance of the principles of health. From time to time she
forgot which side her liver was on, but she had been doctored (as she
called it) for all her organs, and she was willing to be doctored for any
one of them that happened to be in the place where she fancied a present
discomfort. She was not insensible to the claims which her husband's
disorders had upon science, and she liked to end the tale of her own
sufferings with some such appeal as: "I wish you could do something for
Mr. Landa, too, docta." She made him take a little of each medicine that
was left for her; but in her presence he always denied that there was
anything the matter with him, though he was apt to follow the doctor out
of the room, and get a prescription from him for some ailment which he
professed not to believe in himself, but wanted to quiet Mrs. Lander's
mind about.

He rose early, both from long habit, and from the scant sleep of an
elderly man; he could not lie in bed; but his wife always had her
breakfast there and remained so long that the chambermaid had done up
most of the other rooms and had leisure for talk with her. As soon as he