"At the same time I wish to consult you with regard to an ailment of my own, which for years----"
"Excuse me," Wehlau bluntly interrupted him, "I no longer practise medicine, and was not summoned hither professionally. I hastened to the Countess's sick-bed from motives of friendship. I could not possibly accept a stranger as a patient."
The Freiherr stared in surprise and indignation at the bourgeois professor who could speak of the medical treatment of a Countess Steinrück as a matter of friendship, and refuse to accept as a patient a Freiherr von Eberstein. In his seclusion he had formed no idea of the social position of the famous investigator, but he had heard formerly that scientific men were all eccentric, entirely unacquainted with the usages of polite society, and consequently rude and unpolished in the extreme. He therefore magnanimously forgave the Professor for these characteristics of his class, and, since he really needed his advice, he determined to make him understand clearly who and what his visitor was.
"I am a near friend of the Countess's family," he began again. "We two are the oldest lines in the country; my family is in fact two hundred years the elder: it dates from the tenth century."
"Very remarkable," said Wehlau, without the least idea of what the tenth century had to do with the matter.
"It is a fact," declared Eberstein, "an historically authenticated fact. Count Michael, the Steinrücks' ancestor, first emerges from the twilight of legend during the crusades, while Udo von Eberstein----" And off he went into the ancient chronicles of his house, beginning a discourse similar to the one with which Gerlinda had so terrified the guest at the Ebersburg. It swarmed with knightly names and feuds, and with all the glorious mediæval blood and murder in which the Ebersteins had a share.
At first the Professor seemed desirous of discovering some means of cutting short this unwelcome visit, but he gradually became attentive, even drawing up his chair close to that of the old Freiherr and gazing steadily into his eyes. Suddenly he interrupted him in the middle of a sentence and seized his hand.
"Permit me,--your case interests me. Strange, the pulse is all right!"
The Freiherr exulted; this discourteous professor knew now that he was in presence of the scion of a lofty line, and was ready to give the advice he had at first refused.
"You find my pulse all right?" he asked. "I am glad of that; but you will nevertheless prescribe for----"