But the fair hour was spoiled by Malt, who burst in with the information that the limping gentleman had leaped overboard. From the dormer-window might be seen a returning village funeral-procession, conglomerated around the spot on the bank where Schoppe had plunged in. With frightful wildness--for in Albano indignation was next-door neighbor to terror and pain--he dragged along with him, as he flew to the rescue, the lazy provincial physician, and even threatened him with hard words; for Sphex was going to wait for a carriage, and meanwhile represent to himself the possible cases of too late preparations for a rescue, and besides, perhaps, cherished a hope of serving up Schoppe, on the anatomical table, as Doctor's-feast of science. The youth ran out with him,--through corn-fields, amidst tears and amidst curses,--with alternate clenched fist and outspread palm, and his eye grew more and more dim and dizzy, and his heart hotter and hotter, the nearer they approached the dark circle. At last they could not only see the Librarian, but also hear him; in good case he turned towards them his curly head from among the reeds, and, occasionally, as he was haranguing the mourning-retinue, he flung up, in a fiery manner, his hairy arm above the water-plants. Of course the case stood thus:-- His sorites, as long as he lived, was the following: "He had come into the world, not feet foremost, but head foremost, and, accordingly, carried his head and nose high and lofty,[102] because he could not help it. Now he knew of no more genuine freedom than health;--every malady shuts up and warps the soul, and the earth is, merely for that reason, a universal block-house, _la salpetrière_ and house of bruises;[103]--whoso made use of an oyster-snail-viper medicine was himself a slimy, snaky, sticking viper, oyster, snail, and therefore the ever-free savages killed their invalids, and the vigorous Spartans gave no patient an office, least of all the crown;--and strength was especially necessary, in our degenerate days, in order to maul qualified subjects, because, to his certain knowledge, the fist with some substance in it was the best plaintiff's plea and _actio ex lege diffamari_ which a citizen could institute." Therefore he bathed summer and winter in ice-cold water, just as he, for the same reason, kept himself temperate in all things.