"Applications of ice to the head during twenty-four hours at least," said Wehlau, laconically.
"What! with my gout!" the old gentleman exclaimed, in dismay. "I cannot endure the least cold, and if you will investigate my case----"
"Not the slightest necessity. I know perfectly well what ails you," declared the Professor.
The Freiherr's respect increased for this famous physician, who could pronounce upon a patient's condition by merely looking at him, without asking a single question.
"The Countess certainly spoke in the highest terms of your keenness of apprehension," he rejoined; "but I should like to ask you a question, Herr Professor Wehlau. Your name strikes me as familiar. Can you be in anywise related to Wehlau Wehlenberg of the Forschungstein?"
"Forschungstein?" Again the Professor hastily felt the Freiherr's pulse, while the old man resumed, condescendingly,--
"It would not be the first time that a member of an ancient family had refused to adopt a title when forced by circumstances to embrace a bourgeois profession."
"Bourgeois profession!" exclaimed Wehlau. "Herr von Eberstein, do you imagine that scientific pursuits are followed like--shoemaking, for example?"
"They certainly are very unbefitting noble blood," said Eberstein, haughtily. "As for the Forschungstein, it is the ancestral seat of a young nobleman who came to the Ebersburg last autumn and partook of my hospitality during a stormy night. An amiable young man that Hans Wehlau Wehlenberg----"
"Of the Forschungstein!" the Professor interposed, with a burst of laughter. "Now I understand it all. It is another prank of that graceless boy of mine. I remember his telling me that he had passed a stormy night in an old castle. I am sorry, Herr Baron, that my good-for-naught should so have imposed upon you. His Forschungstein is, however, all the antiquity that either he or I can lay claim to. No, he is plain Hans Wehlau like myself, and when next I lay eyes upon him I shall give him my opinion of his promotion to the nobility."