Thus patiently and solitarily did he spend with his sick friend, in nursing, indulging, caressing, the days which he would gladly have made use of for his flight out of Germany; and loved him more and more passionately, the more he did and endured in his behalf. He absolutely would not suffer it at the hand of fate, that such a world full of ideas should approach its conflagration, and so free a heart, full of honesty, its last beating. Schoppe had in the youth's heart even a greater realm than Dian; for he took life more freely, deeply, greatly, bravely; and if the law of Dian's life was beauty, his was freedom, and he tended, like our solar system, to the constellation Hercules. Notwithstanding all entreaties, he took no medicines from Dr. Sphex; for he had already, he said, committed his case to an old, well-known practitioner and circuit-physician, Time. He readily allowed Sphex to draw up a recipe, to bring it; willingly looked it through, disputed about the contents, remarked it was easier to _be_ sanitary-counsel than to give it, and he saw, indeed, that he hit his case, because he pursued a weakening treatment, which was the first thing with crazy people; he added, however, that reason was not just the thing he desired, but only a couple of valiant shanks to walk with and stand upon, and a couple of arms well filled out to strike home withal; and for the rest, he told him he did not like him, because he cut up dogs. Albano, too, at last, took the position, that, if Schoppe could only get muscular strength again for a social journey with him, then the frenzy-dream into which the unsocial one had thrown him would readily fly away of itself. Schoppe was always flying out at the Doctor particularly. Once the latter said: "Follow, if not me, at least your second self," and pointed to Albano. "To the Devil," he replied, "with my second self,--that may be you: I feel shy enough of you to make it probable,--but he, there, is certainly, I have every reason to hope, hardly my sixth, twentieth self, or the like." Meanwhile Sphex stuck to his opinion, that his sthenic sleeplessness, which was alternately the daughter and the mother of his fever-visions, especially of the Baldhead, barred up the way to relief, and must be conquered by weakening processes. When one day Dian, who often visited his friend Albano, heard this, he asked, why one would not deceive and cure him directly with the tidings of the Spaniard having travelled off for fear of him, say to France. Albano replied: "Truly I should be glad to say it, but I cannot; I could as soon will to tell a lie to God or myself." "Whims!" said Dian; "I'll tell him myself." "Just what I had expected of that Spaniard," replied Schoppe to the official recipe-falsehood. When Dian had gone out, he asked Albano: "Do I not sit now much cooler and more icy here? And, truly, since hearing that the Baldhead is in France, I have become almost a new man. Of course I am lying, but Dian lied first."