By some wonderful means the half-skipper found the left-handed man rather speedily, only they had not yet put him to bed, but he still lay on the floor of the corridor and complained to the Englishman: "I must say a couple of words to the Emperor without fail."  
The Englishman hastened to Count Kleinmichel and made a row: "How can they treat him so? He has a human soul," says he, "even if he has only a sheepskin coat."
 
For this bit of reasoning they immediately chased the Englishman away,—because he had dared to mention the human soul. And then some one said to him: "You had better go to Cossack Platoff—he has simple feelings."
 
The Englishman got at Platoff, who was now reclining on his couch once more. Platoff listened to him and recalled the left-handed man.
 
[Pg 91]
 
"Certainly, my friend," says he, "I am very intimately acquainted with him—I have even tweaked him by the hair—only I know not how I can assist him in his present unhappy plight, because I am now entirely out of the service and have received full pension, so they no longer respect me; but do you run quickly to Commandant Skobeleff; he is in power, and also experienced in this sort of thing—he will do something."
 
And the half-skipper went to Skobeleff, and told him everything; what the left-handed man's illness was, and how he had contracted it. Says Skobeleff: "I understand this complaint, only the Germans cannot cure it; but some sort of a doctor of the ecclesiastical vocation is needed here, because those fellows have been reared on such examples, and they can give ............