octor gave them
the desired information.

The halls down below here were already full when the two gentlemen had
been brought in. So they had willingly acceded to their request to have
a room to themselves, and had quartered them in the top story. He
offered to guide them up there himself; but this Schnetz gratefully
declined, not wishing to take him away from his patients.

So they mounted to the corridor of the top story, and at the very first
door which they came to they heard a voice from the room within that
caused them to start. It was a soft, girlish voice reading something
aloud--verses, as it seemed.

"It isn't likely they are in here," muttered Schnetz, "unless they have
been seized with a pious fit, and have consented to let a sister of
charity come in and edify them with her hymn-book. Well, there have
been instances.--But no, this hymn-book has never seen the inside of a
church, at all events."

They listened, and distinctly heard the lines.

"'Holy Maid of Orleans, pray for us!'" cried Schnetz. "I must be
greatly mistaken in my man, if Elfinger isn't found somewhere near when
Schiller is being spouted."

Without stopping to knock, he softly opened the door, and entered with
Felix.

It was a high but not a very large room, whose only window opened on
the rear of the garden. Only a single ray of the afternoon sunshine
streamed through the gray blind and fell upon one of the beds that
stood near the wall on the right; while the other cot, opposite it, was
surrounded by a high Spanish screen, and was pushed back so as to be
entirely in the shade.

On the bed to the right lay Rosenbusch, covered over with a thin
blanket, the upper part of his body propped up into a half-sitting
posture by pillows, holding a sketchbook on his knees and busily
engaged in drawing.

Except that his face was somewhat paler, he showed no traces of the
hardships he had suffered; but on the contrary, his bright eyes beamed
from under a red fez as merrily, and he looked as fresh as he lay there
in his loose jacket, with his carefully-tended beard, as though he had
made his toilet for the express purpose of receiving visits.

"I could have told you so!" he cried to his friends, as they entered
(the reader who sat behind the screen was silent in an instant)--"the
first visit of the saviours of the fatherland, on this day of triumph,
is to the invalid's paradise. God greet you, noble souls! You find us
here as well provided f