Meanwhile his and January's joint visits, with their stage entanglements, grew to quite other ones, even a ganglion of friendship between January and himself,--and at the same time gave this friendship increased notoriety. In St. Luna, in Le Baut's house, three times as much was made out of it as there was in it,--in the parsonage, nine times. To this was added a trifle, namely, a scuffle,--properly, two. I have the incident from Spitz,--Victor got it from Flamin,--he from Matthieu,--in whose noble historical style it can here be handed over to posterity. The Evangelist was never ashamed of a commoner, provided he could make a fool of him. Therefore he visited the court-apothecary without scruple. To the latter, who cordially hated the barrack-physician, Culpepper, on account of his coarse arrogance, and on account of the reason given in the note[205] below, Matthieu had long since promised to upset the Doctor. As the latter and the podagra had actually been banished by Victor from January's feet, the Evangelist gave the apothecary to understand that he himself would, without _his_ hint and wishes, have contributed far less to the fall of Culpepper than he had done. Zeusel, especially as he had the successor of the barrack-physician in his house, came after some days to the billiard-table with the certain conviction that he, from his apothecary's-shop, had thrust under Culpepper's posteriors the invisible leg, and hurled him down from the steps of the throne. There were present, unfortunately, the barrack-physician himself, and the noble Mat. Zeusel came upon this stage with the festoons of three watch-chains, with a pair of breeches on whose knees some Arabesques were printed, with a double waistcoat and double neck-tie, and with double signs of exclamation in his face at the barrack-physician;--his money-purse lay exactly under the _os sacrum_, because he, like some Englishmen, had caused his breeches-pocket to be concealed in the region of the breeches buckle. He had with him as his chamber-moor his long, lean dispenser, who in the adjoining drinking-room encountered the very short dispenser of the second apothecary's-shop, or shop of the _canaille_. The short dispenser, out of malice, followed the tall one about everywhere, merely to vex him; but this time he had just come back from the country with some hens'-eggs which he had collected as fees from convalescent patients.