whose condition filled him with the deepest apprehension.

The new laboratory was presently the scene of the most zealous labours,
and Herr Schimmel was delighted with his new position, for no apothecary
and chemist had ever before had such a well-fitted furnace and such
delicate scales and instruments to work with; and if he did not
understand what was the end of so much weighing and fusing and
distilling, or what the remedies were that the doctor was always
decanting from the boiling liquids, yet the occupation made the long
summer days pass most pleasantly, for he had none of that love of the
open air that most Leipzigers bring into the world with them.

Since his apprenticeship, and a whole lifetime had passed since then,
he had left the apothecary shop only twice a year to take a holiday,
and on none of these occasions had he ever seen green trees, for his
"outings" as he called them, fell, according to his own wish, on the
festival of the "Three Kings" in January, and on the twenty-seventh of
March which was his saint's day, his name being Rupert.

Of the eighty holidays that lay behind him--all of which he had spent in
going to see a sister who was married to a miller and lived in Gohlis--
nine and thirty times it had rained, and forty-one times it had snowed.
In consequence of this "a walk in the fresh air" always suggested to his
mind, damp clothes, wet feet, ruined shoes, a cold in the head, and an
attack of indigestion--the result of his sister's greasy cooking. His
wife, too, preferred the inside of the city walls, "where" as she was so
fond of saying, "you know where you are."

Thus even in summer Herr Schimmel was always on hand to help the doctor,
nor had he cause to complain of being over worked, for the master seemed