When he has once made his choice, then he is obliged to endeavor to fix it upon his Highness, like pastel or quicksilver. January had never, even from his chapel, heard anything more agreeable than Victor's assertion, which set him free from the prostration, dosing, and starving which he had had to go through. Victor, in his joy at the lightness of the malady, hurried away to give his recipe for it, after he had asserted, by way of consolation, that "an _ethereal_ body was still to be taken along with him, and would serve the soul, not indeed for a heavenly Graham's-bed,[194] but still for an air-bed, which made itself up. Only poor women's-souls--if one rightly regarded their bodies--might be said to lie on thorny straw sacks, smooth hussars'-saddles, and sharp sausage-sledges[195]; whereas shaven and tattooed spirits (monks and savages) wrapped themselves up with such fine bodies stuffed with whalebone shavings."[196] Away he flew; and I have already reported that the apothecary presently thought to himself: "Heigh! heigh!" In the apothecary's shop Victor said to the dispenser, at whom he flew like saltpetre: "Sir colleague, what think you about it, if we should have nothing to cure in the case of his Highness but wind? You must advise me. For my part, I should prescribe:-- _Pulv. Rhei Orient_. _Sem. Anisi Stellati_ ----_F[oe]niculi_ _Cort. Aurant. immat_. _Sal. Tart. [=a][=a] dr. I_. _Fol. Senn. Alexandr. sine Stipit. dr. II_. _Sacchar. alb. unc. sem_.-- "If you agree with me, I have nothing more to say, except, _C. C. M. f. p. Subt. D. ad Scatulam, S_. Colic-powders, one teaspoonful as often as occasion requires."[197] As the dispenser looked at him seriously, he looked at him still more seriously; and the medicine was prepared without a change in the dose. When he had gone, the dispenser said to his two startled pages: "You couple of stupid epiglottises, don't you suppose he has sense enough to ask?" The biographer has no need whatever to justify the circumstance--since the powder and the hero justify it--that January got upon his legs the very same day.