But she saw nothing save the doctor on his knees talking into the corner of the laboratory, where there was nothing but the broom with which she had swept the stone floor that morning, and the shabby old brown peruke that Herr Schimmel was in the habit of putting on in the winter when he crossed the court-yard.
These apparitions she knew so intimately that she began to be reassured, and her confidence once restored she reflected that either the spirits must have held her unworthy of a sight of them and have been visible only to the master, or else that the doctor had gone completely out of his mind.

Of her own sanity she had no doubts for her mind was made of sterner stuff and would therefore be less easily affected.
Whether Doctor Melchior were holding converse with the broom, or the peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be able to listen attentively.
She crossed herself several times for the sake of greater safety, and what she heard from the doctor's own mouth remained a secret between her and Schimmel.
Not a word did she lose till Melchior went into the library next the laboratory, and then she thought it expedient to leave her hiding-place and hurry to her room.
Schimmel had long been in bed, and his snoring greeted her as she entered, but she wakened him to tell him breathlessly what she had just seen and heard.
After she had explained her anxiety about the doctor and its consequences, she continued that the apparition which the doctor had invoked was the Spirit of Truth.

Whether it had been obedient to the call she could not say, but, at any rate it had been no demon of hell-God be praised--bringing a reek of the pit, and besides Satan was the Prince of Lies and would consider himself insulted if he were called the Spirit of Truth, moreover the spirit who had appeared to the doctor had behaved in the most exemplary manner.
The master, too, had confessed with true Christian humility and self reproach that he had sinned against the Spirit of Truth, to whom none the less he had dedicated his body and soul, inasmuch as, influenced by his great love for his wife, he had devoted himself to finding a remedy which would cure her, and had thus become a traitor to the object of his life.
After this he had sprung up and held aloft his hand with the forefinger extended and sworn to the spirit that nothing here after would seduce him from the pursuit of the elixir which was to render Truth triumphant in the world.
Fran Schimmel described how the doctor's eyes had glowed at these words, and how he had looked as if an invisible hand had written "Truth" in large letters upon his forehead.

He would be as certain to reach his goal as she would be to pray the holy saints for a peaceful death.
After a long silence and much consideration the only thing that Herr Schimmel found to say in answer to these important revelations was: "It is all the same to me," to which his dear wife, with like brevity, and sincere disgust replied: "You fool!" The next morning the doctor began work afresh and with redoubled zeal.
Every drug that had been reserved from the laboratory of the late Court apothecary was brought, mixed with the elixir and fused; and he tried each new mixture on himself, for Frau Schimmel was not to be persuaded to smell any more elixirs.
She, however, was more studious than ever of the necessities of the household, and of the material comfort of the doctor and his child, and when she noticed that her master began to cough as his dead wife had done, she entreated him to take better care of himself, and not to leave his son an orphan she also instigated Herr Winckler to beg him to consider his own welfare and that of the child.
There was yet another thing that made her unhappy.
Her whole heart was wrapped up in little Zeno, and when he was dressed in his best on feast-days a prettier and nobler looking child than he was not to be seen.
But the doctor did not seem to have much affection for him; yet in the evenings when the little one was in bed he went through the same performance that had been customary during the lifetime of its mother, and once in a while he would lift the child out of the cradle and press it to his heart so passionately that the boy, in a fright would struggle to get away from him and would cry for Frau Schimmel.

Finally the child became so afraid of its father that it would not go near him and this the old housekeeper could bear no longer, so she took her courage in her hands and spoke to her master about it.
She began by saying she had not forgotten that, according to his dead father the saints had endowed her with a very limited intelligence, but that she knew enough to be certain that it could be neither wise, nor right for a man who had been blessed with such a fine son, to be indifferent to his treasure and indeed to estrange it.
The extraordinary man looked at her with his sad eyes and answered thoughtfully: "I demand nothing from the boy be cause I have no other idea than to give him all I have and am.