“Why, what can one do, Malchen?” asked honest Dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-a-penny ones behind. “Saint Ursula only knows!” sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. “I only know that I will never undress in the room!” “Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo--oop. Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop.” “I believe that must be the way after all,” said Madame Doppeldick, on whose mind her husband’s sentence of transcendental philosophy had cast a new light. “To be sure there is a little landing-place at the stair-head, and _our_ bed is exactly opposite the door--and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in--But are you sure, Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain? Did you tell him that _his_ was the one next the window--with the patchwork coverlet?” “Not a word of it!” answered honest Dietrich, who like all other Prussians had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manœuvres. “Not a word of it--we talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle--Schloo--oo--oop!” “It was done like my own dear, kind Dietrich,” exclaimed the delighted Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin. The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame Doppeldick saw her way before her, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after the ice has broken up. From that moment, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of “Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop” was sung, as “arranged for a duet.” CHAPTER VIII. “ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,” thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,” she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband. But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach--that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan, with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.