"If there had been a wrestle with a robber, as I dreamed," said Obenreizer, "you see, I was stripped for it."
"And armed too," said Vendale, glancing at his girdle.
"A traveller's dagger, that I always carry on the road," he answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath with his left hand, and putting it back again. "Do you carry no such thing?"
"Nothing of the kind."
"No pistols?" said Obenreizer, glancing at the table, and from it to the untouched pillow.
"Nothing of the sort."
"You Englishmen are so confident! You wish to sleep?"
"I have wished to sleep this long time, but I can't do it."
"I neither, after the bad dream. My fire has gone the way of your candle. May I come and sit by yours? Two o'clock! It will so soon be four, that it is not worth the trouble to go to bed again."
"I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now," said Vendale; "sit here and keep me company, and welcome."
Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer soon returned in a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat down on opposite sides of the hearth. In the interval Vendale had replenished the fire from the wood- basket in his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the table a flask and cup from his.
"Common cabaret brandy, I am afraid," he said, pouring out; "bought upon the road, and not like yours from Cripple Corner. But yours is exhausted; so much the worse. A cold night, a cold time of night, a cold country, and a cold house. This may be better than nothing; try it."
Vendale took the cup, and did so.
"How do you find it?"
"It has a coarse after-flavour," said Vendale, giving back the cup with a slight shudder, "and I don't like it."
"You are right," said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking his lips; "it has a coarse after-flavour, and I don't like it. Booh! It burns, though!" He had flung what remained in the cup upon the fire.
Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclined his head upon his hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs. Obenreizer remained watchful and still; but Vendale, after certain nervous twitches and starts, in one of which he rose to his feet and looked wildly about him, fell into the strangest confusion of dreams. He carried his papers in a leather case or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of his buttoned travelling-coat; and whatever he dreamed of, in the lethargy that got possession of him, something importunate in those papers called him out of that dream, though he could not wake from it. He was berated on the steppes of Russia (some shadowy person gave that name to the place) with Marguerite; and yet the sensation of a hand at his breast, softly feeling the outline of the packet-book as he lay asleep before the fire, was present to him. He was ship-wrecked in an open boat at sea, and having lost his clothes, had no other covering than an old sail; and yet a creeping hand, tracing outside all the other pockets of the dress he actually wore, for papers, and finding none answer its touch, warned him to rouse himself. He was in the ancient vault at Cripple Corner, to which was transferred the very bed substantial and present in that very room at Basle; and Wilding (not dead, as he had supposed, and yet he did not wonder much) shook him, and whispered, "Look at that man! Don't you see he has risen, and is turning the pillow? Why should he turn the pillow, if not to seek those papers that are in your breast? Awake!" And yet he slept, and wandered off into other dreams.