"His name was Zickelmann. There was the beginning of a letter in his pocket. It was something like this: 'Dear mother, I have not seen you for sixteen years. I have forgotten how you look, dear mother. I am not doing well, but I must go to America to see you once again. It is very sad when a man has no relatives in the whole world. Dear mother, I just want to look at you, and I really won't be a burden to you.'"
The champagne appeared. Before long, the first bottle was replaced by the second.
"Don't be surprised if I am immoderate," said Frederick. "My nerves are in need of it to-day. I have to stupefy myself. Perhaps, with the help of this glorious medicine, I shall be able to sleep a few hours."
It was half past ten, and the physicians were still sitting together. The wine naturally produced a greater degree of intimacy between these two men, who were of the same profession and had already become fairly well acquainted with each other. It was very pleasant to Frederick to unbosom himself.
He said he had entered the world with too favourable a preconceived notion. In a spirit of idealism he had refused the military career for which his father had intended him, and had taken up the study of medicine, in the belief that he would thus be of most service to humanity. He had been deceived.
"The genuine gardener works for the garden full of healthy plants; but our work is devoted to a decaying vegetation sprung from diseased germs. That is why I took up the fight against mankind's awfullest enemy, the bacteria. I admit that the dreary, patient, laborious work, which bacteriology requires, did not satisfy me, either. I didn't possess the capacity to petrify, which is absolutely indispensable in an academic man. When I was sixteen years old, I wanted to become a painter. Over the dissecting table, I composed verses. The thing that I should now most like to be is a freelance writer. From all of which you can see," he concluded, laughing ironically, "that I have made rather a mess of my life."
Wilhelm refused to admit it.
"But I have," Frederick declared. "I am a genuine child of the times, and I am not ashamed of it. The greatest intellects of the day are all in a state of inner ferment. Every individual of significance is just as divided against himself as humanity on the whole. I refer, of course, only to the leading European races. I embody the Pope and Luther, William II and Robespierre, Bismarck and Bebel, the spirit of the American millionaire and the enthusiasm for poverty that was the glory of St. Francis of Assisi. I am the maddest progressive of my time and the maddest reactionary. I despise Americanism, and yet I see in the great American world-invasion, the dominion of the exploiter, something similar to one of the biggest works that Hercules performed in the Augean stables."
"Here's to chaos!" cried Wilhelm.
They touched glasses.