The camp-bed in the corner was the same whereon he had lain after his first duel, with a bag of ice on his head and his bosom friend by his side, with a long pipe.

At that very table he had drawn his first caricature of Herr Professor Winkelnase, which had been framed and hung up in the "Kneipe"-- the drinking-hall of his corps; at the same board he had written his thesis for his doctorate, and here again he had penned the notes for his first lecture.

Professor Winkelnase was dead; not one of his old corps-brothers remained in Heidelberg, but still he clung to the old room.

The learned doctors with whom he drank his wine or his beer of an evening, when he sallied forth from his solitude, wondered at his way of living; for Dr.Claudius was not poor, as incomes go in South Germany.

He had a modest competence of his own to begin with, and his lectures brought him in something, so that he might have had a couple of rooms "_parterre_"-- as the Germans call the _rez-de-chaussee_--and could have been as comfortable as he pleased.