“What baron?” said Christian, who had just lifted up the swooning man, and was supporting him in his arms.
At this moment the son of the danneman pushed Christian with his shoulder, and whispered:
“The iarl! look at the iarl!”
The baron’s young physician hastened to remove his fur cap, which had got pulled down over the invalid’s face, so that he was in danger of suffocating; and Christian came very near opening his strong arms and letting him fall back into the snow, on recognizing, with an insurmountable horror, in the dying man whom he was trying to succor, the Baron Olaus de Waldemora.
They stretched him out on the pile of bears; it was the best bed possible under the circumstances, and the terrified physician implored Stangstadius, who had formerly taken a degree as a physician, to assist him with his advice and experience, in a case which seemed to him extremely grave. Stangstadius, who was making ready to try all his joints, to satisfy himself that he was not more damaged than usual, consented, at last, to pay some attention to the only person whom the overturn seemed to have seriously endangered.
“Parbleu!” he said, looking at the baron, and touching him; “it is perfectly plain: the pulse inert, the face purple, the lips swollen, a death rattle, and, notwithstanding, no injury—It is as clear as day; it is a fit of apoplexy. He must be bled—bled quickly, and abundantly.”
The young physician looked for his case of surgical instruments, and could not find it. Christian and Olof assisted him in his search, but with no better fortune. The baron’s fiery horses had run away with his sleigh, and, by this time, it was almost out of sight. The coachman, thinking that his master would have him beaten to death for his awkwardness, was running after it, half crazy, and startling the desolate silence with his imprecations.
As the danneman’s docile horse had stopped short, they talked of putting the invalid in the peasant’s sleigh, and removing him to the chateau as quickly as possible. Stangstadius protested that he would be dead before they could arrive. The doctor, out of his senses, proposed running after the runaway horses, so as to look for his case in the baron’s sleigh. At last he found it in his pocket, where, thanks to his agitation, he had touched it a dozen times without feeling it; but his hand trembled so, when the moment came to open the vein, that Stangstadius, who was perfectly indifferent to anything outside himself, and who, besides, was very well pleased at being able to prove his superiority in all respects, was obliged to take the lancet and do his work for him.
Christian, who was standing near by, contemplated, with deep inward emotion, this strange and gloomy picture, lighted by the pale gleams of the setting sun: this man, with his powerful frame and terrible countenance, tossing convulsively on his strange couch,—a confused pile of corpses of ferocious beasts; his large, white arm, from which a stream of black blood, congealing upon the snow as it fell, was slowly flowing; the young physician, with his mild, pusillanimous face, upon his knees by his terrible patient, and seemingly divided between the fear of seeing him die under his hands, and a childish terror at the growling of the still living bears by his side; the overturned sleigh, the scattered weapons; the startled look of the young danneman, through which—strangely blending with his terror—flashed a gleam of malignant satisfaction; the thin horse smoking after his rapid race, as he indifferently ate the snow; and, above all, the fantastic face of Stangstadius, lighted up by a smile of triumph which had become his habitual expression, and his sharp voice, haranguing about all that had happened, in a self-satisfied and pedantic tone. It was a scene never to be forgotten: a group at the same time laughable and tragic; at a first glance, perhaps, incomprehensible.
“My poor doctor,” said Stangstadius, “there is no use in hiding it, if your invalid escapes he will be lucky! But don’t imagine it is the upset that has brought on this fit; it has been threatening for the last twenty-four hours. How is it that you did not foresee it?”