he middle of the
laboratory and stopped directly under the lamp, which was suspended from
the point where the ribs of the vaulting intersected. There he waved a
fresh laurel branch towards every side of the room and called out the
same words and names that he had murmured by the bed-side of his son,
only louder and more imperiously.

To the listener it was perfectly clear that this was an invocation of
spirits, and her knees trembled under her, and her teeth chattered so
audibly that she feared he must hear her. Though she closed her eyes
tightly in order not to see the hellish brood that was about to pervade
that Christian house, fearing that she might be strangled by them or go
mad; yet the unholy creatures must have entered the laboratory obedient
to their master's call for she distinctly heard him greet one of them
solemnly.

As she did not smell any sulphur fumes nor see any dancing flames when
she peeped out from under her half-closed lids, she gathered sufficient
courage to look about her. But she saw nothing save the doctor on his
knees talking into the corner of the laboratory, where there was nothing
but the broom with which she had swept the stone floor that morning,
and the shabby old brown peruke that Herr Schimmel was in the habit of
putting on in the winter when he crossed the court-yard.

These apparitions she knew so intimately that she began to be reassured,
and her confidence once restored she reflected that either the spirits
must have held her unworthy of a sight of them and have been visible
only to the master, or else that the doctor had gone completely out of
his mind. Of her own sanity she had no doubts for her mind was made of
sterner stuff and would therefore be less easily affected.

Whether Doctor Melchior were holding converse with the broom, or the
peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel
could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be
able to listen attentively.

She crossed herself several times for the sake of greater safety, and
what she heard from the doctor's own mouth remained a secret between her
and Schimmel.

Not a word did she lose till Melchior went into the library next the
laboratory, and then she thought it expedient to leave her hiding-place
and hurry to her room.

Schimmel had long been in bed, and his snoring greeted her as she
entered, but she wakened him to tell him breathlessly what she had just
seen and heard