Hansel's answer was made in quite a solemn tone; he was evidently burning with desire to tell Delmar what he had repeated already three or four times to the peasants, who listened with eager attention to his every word; but he waited to be questioned by Paul. As soon as this occurred the floodgates of his eloquence were opened. He told minutely all that he had heard from the doctor's servant. Yesterday evening, when the stable-boy from the Post had taken the doctor home, he had been received very unkindly by his wife, who had called him an irreclaimable drunkard, and more hard names besides than the poorest peasant's wife in the village would have bestowed upon her husband. The doctor only laughed childishly, and, although his wife forbade his speaking before the maid, went maundering on unintelligibly about Herr von Heydeck at the castle, and Herr Delmar, and Count Menotti. The doctor's wife had grown quite furious when she could not make him hold his tongue, and had dashed a bucketful of cold water over his head to bring him to his senses. She had often done this before, and the doctor also often held his head under the cold stream of water at the brook to make himself sober; but on this evening the cold water did him no good: he grew quite purple in the face, and it was a long time before he came to himself and got to bed. To-day they had a great quarrel early in the morning; the maid did not know what it was about,--they often quarrelled,--but she heard the name of von Heydeck very often; and towards ten o'clock the doctor took his hat and stick and went to the Post, to pay his visit to the sick gentleman there, and as he walked through the garden the maid had noticed that his face was much redder than usual when he had been intoxicated the day before. He spoke very quietly and was entirely himself; but when he came home again, walking very unsteadily and looking very ill, the doctor's wife flew into a rage, and insisted upon his letting the water at the brook flow over his head. He refused to do it at first, but his wife stormed and insisted, and he yielded at last, as he always did. Scarcely however had he held his head under the stream for a minute when he suddenly fell on the ground and lay like one dead.