sleeping quarters.

The janitor opened his eyes wide when he was knocked up to open the
back-door for Herr Rosenbusch. The white mice, too, quickly sprang up
from their pleasant dreams of biscuit and Swiss cheese, and rubbed
their snouts against the wire-netting in nervous excitement; for they
recognized their master. There he stood in the moonlight, paying no
attention to them, firmly planted before the battle of Luetzen. He gazed
at it for a while in silence; then he felt for the place where his
beard was usually to be found.

"You are no fool, after all!" he muttered to himself. "If you had never
painted anything but that black charger there, rearing because he has
received a bullet in his neck--_Basta! Anch' io sono pittore!_"

Then he took his flute out of its case, and marched up and down for a
while blowing an _adagio_, in order to dissipate the fumes of the red
Wuertemberger. At length, when he felt tired enough, he rigged up a bed
on the floor out of a Swedish saddle, that he took for a pillow, a
saddle-blanket, said to have been used by Count Piccolomini, and a
tiger-skin which the moths had eaten until it looked like a variegated
geographical chart, but which was popularly supposed to have belonged
to Froben, the Master of the Horse. However this might be, it served to
make a softer bed for the tired body of the last of the romantic
battle-painters; and he stretched himself upon it with a sigh, looked
out once more on the moonlight night, and then fell into a deep and
dreamless sleep, such as is rarely granted to a disappointed lover.

CHAPTER IV.

Elfinger had been sitting up late into the night awaiting the return of
his friend, until at last he was forced to admit that there could be no
doubt but what the adventure had not ended very gloriously. He fell
asleep with a heavy heart, for his last hopes were now defeated.

The next morning he crept mournfully down to the bank, and left it
earlier than usual under some pretext or other. He hoped to find
Rosenbusch at home at last. But the little, scantily furnished, untidy
chamber of the battle-painter was still vacant.

Could he have done something desperate, left the city or even--?

In great excitement, for he loved his good comrade heartily, he mounted
the dark stairs for the second time, after the close of his evening
duties at his desk. He found on his little table an unmistakable
symbolical sign that his fri