Having dropped my bag and secured a room at the pension, I climbed up there. First I had to conciliate a very doubtful-looking mastiff; then appeared a tall, robust, well-made, soldier-like looking form in English costume of blue serge, brigand felt hat, with a long pipe, who looked about fifty, and not at all like a doctor. He received me very kindly, and took me up flights of stairs, through courts, into a wainscoted oak room, with fruits and sweets on the table, with barred iron gates and drawbridges and chains in different parts of the room, that looked as if he could pull one up and pop one down into a hole. He talked French and Italian, but I soon perceived that he liked Italian best, and stuck to it; and I also noticed that, by his mouth and eyes, instead of fifty, he must be about seventy-five. A sumptuous dinner-table was laid out in an adjoining room, with fruit and flowers. I told him I could not be content, having come so far to see him, to have only a passing quarter of an hour. He listened to my long complaints about my health most patiently, asked me every question, but he did not ask to examine me, nor look at my tongue, nor feel my pulse, as other doctors do, but said that I did not look like a person with the complaint mentioned, but as if circulation and nerves were out of order. He prescribed four internal and four external remedies, and baths. I wrote down all his suggestions, and rehearsed it, that he might correct any mistakes; and then asked him of his remedies for gout.
After an hour I was dismissed and went down to the pension, where everything was clean; the air was beautiful, the supper delicious, though simple. They were going to build a larger pension. I never heard nightingales sing more beautifully. Mattei had a nephew and niece living with him, the governess, and six servants. His life passes in building and improving this château, and his medicinal studies. He is awfully good to the poor, and gives them advice, medicine gratis, and money. After dinner I had a long talk with Mrs. Schmidt, who carries out his directions, with great knowledge and tact. She enlightened me a great deal about my health and his remedies, and gave me a hint not to mention fees, or he would never speak to me again; and so, of course, I was careful not to look at my hotel or medicine bill, except the total.
The next morning I got up at five, and, with a strong horse and little cart, Blanche and I went up an awful breakneck road to a crag as high again as Mattei's castle, where was a solitary little country chapel. We asked to have Mass and Communion, as it was the first Friday in the month. A priest like an old family picture came out and said Mass and gave us Communion, and we scrambled down again by half-past nine for coffee at the pension. I then set off to have a second consultation with Mattei. This time the dog sat at my feet. And then he called his governess to show me over the castle. (Doré with a bad nightmare would be nothing to it.) It was grand, bold, splendid, and reckless; but the beds were marble—æsthetic biers—with classic garlands of flowers in marble vases on marble tables; the furniture a marble bench. Think of it in winter. There were drawbridges with bolts everywhere—the bedroom doors drawn up at night, showing black bottomless pits in the rock, into which a would-be assassin would fall. The look-out was splendid, wild and eerie. When I saw the mad allegories on the wall in fresco, I said, "Is it right to take medicine from such a lunatic? And yet he has cured hundreds and thousands, so I suppose I may."
Then I found that I was not to wait here, because all their beds were full at the pension, but I was to buy a month's medicines, to go to some quiet mountain place and rest, and perform my cure, and correspond with him. I was to eat and drink well, and do everything I always did; so my bourne will be Krapina-Teplitz in the Carniola, where Richard would also go for his gout-baths; a cheap, wild, quiet, mountain retreat. I found, however, just before going away from Mrs. Schmidt, that whereas he had told me to put one hundred globules of one medicine into my bath, that I must only put fifty, as he was very fond of beginning at the highest and letting you down, instead of beginning at the lowest, and bringing you up to what you can stand. I also found out that loads of people were frequently in agonies of pain, and had to remain so till they telegraphed for Madame Schmidt, who came with the antidote; and I did not like that prospect. I believe she has done away with all these risks now by her new improvements in treatment; but she was not a free agent then as she is now, and I should think must have a very great success.
These scraps of information will interest many people. I then came back to Venice, where I found dear Lady Marian Alford, which made me stop three days, and then I went on to Trieste.
After I got back Richard and I were dining, and I began my cure, "six globules dry on the tongue with the first spoonful of soup." Almost as soon as I had swallowed it, I began to feel very odd, as if I had a sort of private earthquake going on in me, and got frightened. Richard said, "Why, it can't be those miserable little globules. I would swallow the whole bottle." "Don't do that," I said, "but take what I have taken—six dry on the tongue with a spoonful of soup." In a few minutes he was deadly pale, and began to stagger about as I did. He said, "No more of that. These are things that ought to be done under the eye of the Count himself, or Mrs. Schmidt, and so neither you nor I will do that cure." I do not want to choke anybody off from doing the cure, because I think it would be a great success under Mrs. Schmidt's personal directions.
The Karso air was now charming, so that we went up there for awhile, and went over again to Duino and Monfalcone. But first we went during this month to see the whole of the Niebelungen, first the Rheingold, the Walküre, Siegfried, the Götterdämerung, beautifully performed at Trieste.