"Oh! I cannot follow you. I do not understand a word of this. Here I am on the rack, and you talk in riddles—"

"Your fate, madam, your life, next to God, is in your hands! I have studied your disease for months, and if I now do tell you the truth frankly, and without reserve, it is because I have come to the conclusion that it may benefit you to hear the truth. That is the curse which frequently attaches to us physicians and to our successes, that the patients are few indeed, who are able to bear the truth!" "And this fearful truth, upon me! - what is it?"

- oh, have pity me.

Either you are lost beyond all hope, as you say yourself, or you may be completely restored to health in a comparatively short time."

"But what must I do?"

"You do not offend me, madam. I can fully realize your emotions at this moment; but permit me to say that you are sadly mistaken, if you suppose, but for a moment, that I have lightly taken my present course. How much easier would it have been for me to prolong the cure, which science, in cases like your own, prescribes to us, and which has proved successful in many instances, but utterly no physician at all! failed in this! This very and most timely He cannot do you any good." observation it was, which led me to think

"Above all things, madam, dismiss, for the present, at least, me, your physician!"

“I—take another physician? "No,

no other,

"But he can relieve my pain, at least. that in your case, more particularly, someYou have yourself."

"I have deceived you. The medicine which I have given you, and which you say has given you relief, had no medicinal effect whatever; and yet the pain became less, because you believed in my assurances, but not in my medicines! That may prove to you, madam, how sad a lot falls to the share of us physicians; we are obliged to lie, and the ignorant mass, on that account, accuse us of charlatanism. Would you have believed me, had I told you that you would feel better in a couple of hours? No, indeed! but you believed in the colored water I gave you, more than if I had given you my word of honor."

"Then," she answered, looking at me in great confusion, "your physic — "

"During the last eight months, madam, you have not tasted any physic; and yet, as you have just told me, the state of your health, compared with that of last year, has greatly improved."

thing else had to be reached than the sick body alone!"

She gave me a penetrating look.

"What do you mean?" she stammered, a gentle flush arising on her pale cheeks; "what do you mean, sir?"

"I saw plainly," continued I, without replying directly to her last question, "that I had first to wean your body from the use of physic. I have done it; and now, if you will follow my advice, it is for you to act. I have restored to that end the strength you then lacked; and I can only repeat, it is for you to act now. I can do nothing more for the present."

"Much of all you are telling me there, doctor, puzzles, astonishes, and exasperates me. I can only repeat to you that I do not understand you."

"I shall endeavor to make myself more intelligible by using an old, hackneyed simile. Just let us suppose that a very sharp knife is put into too narrow a I remained silent, anxious to see what sheath; that an uneasy hand is forever effect my unexpected disclosures would moving and turning the knife while in the produce upon her. That I was playing a sheath, - what will be the result? The bold game, I knew but too well; but I sheath will be destroyed in a very short took so sincere an interest in the poor time, and nothing can prevent it, if the lady, that I had, for some time past, re-hand moving the knife will not consent to

-

Your mental suffer- "And did you tell me you were my friend?"

shrieking forth unintelligible words, and pressing her child closer to her bosom."

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'Perhaps she was a lunatic. But calm yourself, madam."

"Your feelings do you honor, sir," she replied, holding out her hand; "but believe me, it is all in vain. My husband lacks, what alone can make a true man, a heart! His intellect, however, is all "A lunatic, think you? Ha! ha! And the keener for that. I ought not to com- when, a year after that, I met the man who plain. From among a large number of loved me, and to whom I had pledged my admirers, who, during my widowhood, heart, his father, a poor, beggared nofluttered around me, or my fortune, I se- bleman with a family of eight children, to lected him of my own free will. My first whom a daughter-in-law with a dower of marriage was not a happy one, from an a hundred thousand thalers was offered, entirely opposite reason. My first hus- was probably a lunatic also for telling his band was a merchant, and I accused my son, who asked for the parent's consent, father of having speculated with my per-Marry the hangman's daughter, if she be son, although he gave me a princely an honest girl and you love her, but never, dower. You are silent: I divine your never shall you have my consent to a thoughts, doctor. You think probably marriage with Clara Bernitz!" that the fault of my twice unhappy wedded life lies only with myself. Very possibly; but the fault of the education I received surely was not mine. Oh, my youth! Mammon has spoiled and destroyed it, doctor! How have I suffered, sighed, and sobbed! How fervently wished, and longed, and prayed to be made poor, to be permitted humbly to earn my bread by the work of my hands! You are smiling, doctor. You may think this to be a silly wish, well befitting a romantic young heiress. You do me wrong. Listen to me, and I will tell you what shall make you shudder, — yes, even you, who are a surgeon, and, without a tremble, have, no doubt, seen streams of human blood on the field of battle. Listen to me 19

And, with feverish excitement, she seized my hand and drew me towards her.

"Bernitz! Bernitz!" I stood aghast. "You are the daughter of -"

"Ha, ha, doctor!" she cried, with a shrill laugh, pushing me from her. "You also seem to have heard of my father. After that talk to me of quietness and peace of mind! Better far you give me opium, that I may sleep-forget-and die. O Heaven, have mercy upon me!"

She sank, almost fainting, back into her chair; and I, unable to collect my thoughts and to remain, rushed out of the house. I felt as though the room, in which the daughter of the usurer was wringing her hands in despair, was turning round with me, and I on the point of losing my senses.

V.

"One day," she went on in short, rhap- MY position, as regards Mrs. Benda, the sodic sentences, "one day I met in the counsellor's wife was, it will be readily seen, street, a poor, pale young woman, with a very singular one. It was a matter of an emaciated little child in her arms, course, that whatever had passed twenty whose exterior bespoke such unutterable years ago between the rich usurer Bernitz want and misery that it brought the tears and Captain von Oberg, ought not in the to my eyes. I went up to her, gave her least to affect the care or attention which all the money I had with me, and was on Doctor von Oberg owed and devoted to the point of withdrawing from her mani- his patient. Nevertheless, the reader will festations of gratitude, when I bethought have learned, from the preceding account myself that I could do more for her still. of my interview with the sick lady, that I approached her again, asking her to first and foremost I intended to apply a come to my house, giving her my address moral treatment to the sufferer before and name, when-oh, I see her before science was to renew her last battle with me even now!-the poor, pale woman the disease. To do this, however, rethrew the money down at my feet, and quires a cordiality, a self-sacrifice, on the rushed away as from before a spectre, part of the physician, which it is impossible

to bring into play with every patient. He responded to every call upon it. I went has to take more than a common interest to her, told her everything, and, even bein such a patient, - feel a sympathy, which fore I had finished, she had taken her bonnot every patient can possibly excite. At net and veil, and was ready to go to the all events, I felt so. My capacity as a sick woman. physician had not been able to smother my feelings as a man; and, although my knowledge was gladly at the service of any sufferer, yet did I claim the promptings of my heart as my private property, which I was free to bestow at will.

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Oh, what unknown, delicate chords are there in a woman's heart, which will forever remain a sealed book to us of the sterner sex! Just as the sweetest and most touching, soul-stirring sounds of an instrument can only be called forth by the hands of the artist, just so a woman alone can perceive what is stirring the innermost soul of another.

"You are right, Leo," replied Hildegard, blushingly, casting down her large blue eyes; "I shall give the poor, troubled woman the history of my own life.” "You will, Hildegard?"

"Yes, Leo, I will. I know her; she will endeavor to console me, and in this endeavor will find consolation for herself."

That the remembrance of the Bernitz family affected my sympathy for Mrs. Benda rather unfavorably, the reader can hardly be astonished at. I tried hard to per- "She must not know," I said to her, suade myself that I was not to visit the sins" that we have ever had any connection of the father on the children; that Mrs. with her family. You may apologize Benda, as she had told me herself, might for my abrupt leave by a sudden headhave suffered as much as I—perhaps even ache, or whatever may seem best to you; - at the misdeeds of her father. It but on no account, Hilde, mention a word was of no avail. That name, which for about my father." many years I had learned to hate, incessantly came back to my mind, and with it rose in my memory the image of my beloved mother, whom that very name had probably cost the happiness of her life, at any rate, unspeakable suffering. It was a hard struggle with myself; not that I lacked the necessary earnestness of purpose to decide it in favor of the right, — in other words, the forgetting of the past; but I felt that my strength and tranquillity of mind had left me. Reader, do not judge me harshly. Had Mrs. Benda suddenly met with an accident, I should have hastened to her side in a moment, - should have done my best, with a steady eye, to discover the cause of her distress, and, if need be, performed any operation with a firm hand; but, go to the daughter of my mother's torturer, say kind words to her (perhaps with her hand resting in mine), soothe her suffering soul, no, I could not, at least not then. And yet I felt that it would be wrong to leave the poor woman to herself, brooding over her troubles in the terrible excitement which my sudden departure must have tended to increase.

"May you be successful in this!" I exclaimed, looking at the poor, dear girl, with moistened eyes.

Without another word, she left the house. Deeply moved, I threw myself into a chair. With my head resting in my hand, I sat there a long while, looking at the calm, serene horizon, which rested like a veil on the green hills beyond. What passed in my heart? - God alone knows it. But it was no roseate gleam of hope, no intoxicating dream of castles in the air, which but too frequently cause young men of my age to forget the stern reality of life. I looked deep into my own future. I tried to paint it in cheerful colors. Alas! it was and remained gray and cheerless.

I was called off to a sick villager, living at a short distance from Altburg, whom a fever had prostrated in the midst of his usefulness; and, as the shades of evening were falling fast, and I hoped to dispel the gloomy thoughts of my own heart in the stillness of nature, I decided to go there on

I was anxious to send some other person to her in my place, that might resume and continue the work of quieting and soothing her, by me begun. But whom? All at once a bright idea came to me. I bethought myself of Hildegard. I had foot. probed her heart; it had always nobly

Scarcely, however, had I left the town

behind me and entered the beautiful avenue | few ugly persons. We are all good-looking of poplars which stretched far away into men, as a matter of course; it is enough the country for several miles, when I met to drive one distracted. Actuary Potter, coming in by a side path, who offered to be my companion.

"A man, such as, for instance, the worthy manufacturer Lehmann, with that gerkin, which, under the pseudonyme of nose, he carries on his face, is a perfect blessing; he interrupts most agreeably the wearing monotony of the picture. The aforesaid individual is stupid, mistrustful, miserly, and without character; but he is my friend on account of his nose. Well, doctor, he has a daughter; do you think that she has taken the slightest pains to appropriate to herself the most winning part of her papa's individuality? No, not a bit of it. She has a nose like everybody else's. Oh, it is perfectly maddening!"

Thus he went on from paradox to paradox, from nonsense to nonsense; but always with spirit and warmth, and hence, also, with an irresistible vein of the ludicrous. I had soon recovered from my desponding mood, and gradually resumed my usual flow of spirits.

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Have you been to see your fair and favorite patient to-day?" he asked me, rather abruptly, during a short pause. "Whom do you mean?

He was a most "original" individual, who came very apropos just then, in order to drive away the sad feelings which oppressed me. He was known to have the sharpest tongue in the whole town; and, I verily believe, the best heart. Indefatigable in obliging others, he yet could never forbear persecuting with his sarcasms the next moment even him to whom he had rendered a more than ordinary service the instant before. Naturally of a high order of intellect, he was also gifted, -as his superiors in office could testify, and his very enemies could not deny, - with a most extensive knowledge, not only in matters of law, but in nearly all the branches in which the human mind, during the last fifty years, has made such astounding strides. In spite of his constant readiness to oblige others, he had but few friends in Altburg; for, as I said before, his tongue repelled those whom his actions had drawn towards him. "Can you possibly imagine anything more ugly than these poplars?" he began, the moment he met me. "Just look at these long toothpicks, with their lean branches and gray leaves. Are they not the most striking picture of our times? Smoothly dressed, straightly trimmed, almost uniformed, if you will; and, since we can hardly help having a heart as little as those trees can help having leaves, we prudently turn the naturally green side inwards and outwardly appear so colorless and gray, that it makes a man a perfect hypochondriac to see a certain number of trees and people together. And yet these trees, properly speaking, are, by far, more loyal. If I do not please you, says the languishing poplar, you may pass on and admire the athletic oak or the romantic beech; go into ecstasies with the elegiac willow, or confab with my cousin, the coquettish birch. That is fair; but I ask you, doctor, where can we find a man nowadays who does not look exactly like his neighbor; who has not the same instincts, passions, and negative virtues as his neighbor? Men even resemble each other in dress, appearance,—ay, in their is not well. very features. There are, moreover, very me believe it.

"Oh, what refreshing arrogance! - just as if you had more than one! Mrs. Counsellor Benda, of course! Whom else could I mean? La malade imaginaire — comédié in five acts par Molière!"

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'My dear Potter, let us speak of something else. I have just come from there; the poor lady is in great distress, and-"

"Her husband is suffering far more; but nobody seems to take any notice of him.”

"The counsellor? What ails him? This is the first time I hear of his being out of health."

"Well, well! The ignorance of modern medicine exceeds all bounds. She sees a man walking about, eating, drinking, and sentencing criminals, and forthwith infers therefrom that the man must be in good health. But, hang it! the counsellor is sick! I pledge myself to prove it to the whole bench in a speech of two hours. A man of a similarly plastic phlegm cannot be well; a man leading the life he does at home, and yet growing stouter every day, No, no! you cannot make Running from the bedside