for a moment through him, a sip of
champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits
with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became
drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish but
haunting.

He dreamed he was an armored knight of the time of Charlemagne. He
was astride a steed caparisoned for battle, and was riding southward
from the Alps in the blazing sunlight, along a white road amid what
he supposed were the gardened plains of Lombardy. By his side, in
similar array, rode a lovely blond princess of the North with a
wonderful luxuriance of hair--some daughter of the Frankish race of
fierce and resplendent Brunnhildas or Fredegondas.

She at last became wearied of her heavy armor, the length of the
journey and the burning sun. He assisted in extricating her from her
coat of mail, and took her over into his arms asleep, letting her
armor ride upright on her charger save for the helmet which he
fastened to his pommel. As the horses kept onward he held with
delight her lightsome body, with her miraculous tresses entwining
him as she slumbered. He held her embraced in tenderness, for had
not she--a princess--trusted him and gone away with him alone?

He had not thus ridden with her far, before his eyes, alert in every
direction for the treacherous enemies of the land, beheld with
gaping fright an immense black serpent, brilliant with scales
glistening in the scintillating air, slowly uncoiling out of her
headless panoply that was still riding bolt upright by his side. He
glared down at her in the certainty that she had turned into a twin
serpent at his breast. She lay there still in the seductive form of
a woman. But she had turned loathsome to his touch. He hurled her to
the ground and the next moment was flying on foot, afield, in
horror from the spot.

And he recalled in his dream how woman and the snake have been
allied in legend, religion and history--how they have ever been
identified in the minds of men. His beautiful queen had been at one
with the serpent in that suit of metal. Or was it only Elsa?--was it
only Fritzi?--with their amber hair?

For what seemed a very long time he was fitfully trying to
decide--when he slowly made out that brawny Frau Bucher stood over
him.

CHAPTER XXXV

RECUPERATION

She was in the act of giving him a potion for a raging fever. Once
he realized that Herr Bucher sat silently poring over a book by the
bed, chuck