"Good heavens! that is the order of the royal household of D——!" he said, tapping the box with a respectful finger. "How comes it in this house, sent to this obscure address?"
"Strange!" the Frau President murmured, in a startled tone, her delicate white features flushed with a disagreeable surprise. She put up her eyeglass to examine the contents of the little box. "I do not know the order, or its value——"
"No wonder: it is very rarely bestowed," the councillor of medicine interrupted her.
"Or I might suppose its reception dated from his last campaign;" she completed her remark.
"No possibility of that!" he ejaculated, harshly,—he must have been much agitated to adopt such a tone. "In the first place, the order is only bestowed as a reward for services rendered to the royal family; and then I should like to see the man who could possess such a decoration for more than a year without the world's knowing it. If I only knew why,—knew why!" He rubbed his forehead absently with a hand upon which three marks of princely favour glittered in sparkling diamonds; but of what value were they to him at this moment? They were all presents from his own royal family,—not distinctions awarded by a foreign court.
"This same order is the goal of the hopes of so many," he continued; "many a person of distinction has sighed for it in vain; and here it lies, as if carelessly thrown aside, on this miserable painted table!—thrown around the neck of a man, an ignoramus, disgraced by his repeated failures,—pardon me, dear madame, I cannot help saying so,—thrown around his neck, I repeat, and no one has an idea of the why or the wherefore!"
He had arisen, and was pacing to and fro in the room. The haughty old lady, who so seldom lost her self-possession, looked at him the while with a strange air of scrutiny. "I cannot believe," she observed, in an uncertain tone, "that the decoration has anything to do with his medical services. When was he ever at the D—— court?"
The councillor of medicine paused, and laughed aloud: but it was a forced laugh. "I must say, madame, such an idea never entered my head, simply because it is—impossible. The world must be turned upside down indeed before the quackery and ignorance of raw tyros can be crowned with honour, while genuine merit is trampled under-foot. No, no; that I cannot believe." He went to a window and drummed with his fingers on the glass. "But who knows what he may have undertaken to do? He vanished for eight days, and no one knew whither," he said, after a short silence, in an under-tone. "Hm! who knows anything of his outside relations? These schemers, who never speak of their profession, have good reasons for silence: there is much in their practice of medicine which no honorable man could countenance. Well, I say nothing. It has never been my way to lift the veil from the dark designs of others. We are all in His hands!" And he pointed upwards with such well-feigned reliance upon Heaven that only so intimate a friend as the Frau President could have failed to be deceived. He was always gentle and pious when he imagined himself slighted or defrauded of his rights.
He sat down at the table again, and wrote his prescription, but hurriedly, as if the proximity of the fatal box burned his fingers. "One thing I pray of your kindness, my dear friend," he said, as he finished: "try to get to the bottom of this affair. I should like to be au fait before Bruck begins to boast of his ambiguous distinction,—I should like to have some weapon at hand. No need to advise you to use the most refined diplomacy: there you are mistress and at home."
The old lady did not at once reply: she had watched him while he had been transcribing on paper the delicate, mysterious characters, and had admitted to herself that her old friend had suddenly grown strangely old. Not that wrinkles had invaded his still blooming cheeks,—his face was smooth and plump,—but at this moment, when he was entirely off his guard, there was in all the lines of his countenance an indefinable mixture of anxiety, depression, and peevish discontent; he looked like a man for whom some secret, disturbing thought ruins the day's enjoyment and the night's repose. Now first she remembered that he had of late occasionally thrown out delicate hints with regard to the caprice of princes. Heavens, what if she should lose this friend! Not that this thought had reference to his transfer from this earthly sphere,—she never, if she could help it, thought of death,—but he might be pensioned off. He could then stand her in no stead at court, and she dreaded to think of what this would cost her. Pshaw! why should she? The good old Von Bär was too fond of truffles and the like good but indigestible things; he loved strong wine and heavy beer; he was beginning to be hypochondriacal, to have whims and see phantoms; her refined sensibility was sure to warn her of the decline of any influence at court, and she had not as yet detected in that delicate weathercock the slightest disposition to veer.