CHAPTER LXI.
"The members of the Casino had made it an variable rule never to question the judge's wife respecting her experiences in her work; and she herself never mentioned it unless she had need of another's help. It could easily be seen that she must have met with something difficult to-day; but her face brightened when the school-master began:
"The gentlemen will allow me to explain to Madame Pfann the starting-point and progress of our conversation. The physician had told us that Walderjörgli, since the day of the celebration, had been approaching his release. This suggested the assertion that the advantage of culture to the common people is questionable in every respect; that roughness keeps the people even physically stronger than culture. The judge replied that a child must become a youth, and then a man, and it is an idle question whether it would not have been happier if it had remained a child. The physician was just about to speak of the effect of culture in relation to diseases."
"Not exactly that," said the physician; "but I was going to say that the greater difficulty of regulating the peasant's diet is attributable to his degree of culture; and, again, the acute character of a disease that is already developed may often be broken up by timely remedies."
"I claim this also for intellectual and social discipline," cried the school-teacher. "The moderating power of culture will turn aside the violence of the passions, and ward off their tragical end. Obstinacy and unbending willfulness are not real strength."
"A quarrel about the people's beard," said a clergyman to a colleague, smiling, and handing him an open snuff-box. The school-master had heard a whisper, but had not understood what was said; so he continued, with a sharp sidelong glance at the disturbers:
"As sure as the means of healing from the apothecary help struggling nature in sickness, or put aside a hindrance to nature's work, just as certainly will the means of culture, which for centuries have been gathered together by science, mitigate and heal moral infirmity, and the outbreak of passion that leads to crime--yes, even crimes that are already committed."
Turning to the clergyman, he continued: "Religion is also a health-giving means of culture, but it is not the only one."
"Thanks," replied the clergyman, waving his hand, between the thumb and fore-finger of which he held a pinch of snuff. "But, most honored doctor, your culture-cure is a brewage of classic and scientific education, a teaspoonful every hour, to be well shaken before taken--probatum est."
Amidst general laughter his colleague added: