The beautiful entrance hall, serving also as a greenhouse during the winter, filled in every place with flowers and tropical fruit, faded from my eyes; and in its stead I saw nothing but laughing faces, distorted with scorn and mockery.
A flood of tears cooled the heat of my brain, and a calmness like that of death soon took possession of me. I had fallen from the topmost height of joy and happiness to the profoundest depth of disappointment and despair. If there was nothing else to prove the strength of my mind, the endurance of this sudden change would be sufficient.
I went at once to Dr. Schmidt’s residence in the Hospital Park, where I met him again, not as I had expected an hour before ready to go with me to the hospital department which I was henceforth to superintend, but as a corpse.
After I had left the day before, he had expressed a wish to go into the open air, his excitement nearly equaling mine. Mrs. Schmidt ordered the carriage, and they drove to the large park. He talked constantly and excitedly about the satisfaction he felt in this success until they arrived, when he wished to get out of the carriage and walk with his wife. Mrs. Schmidt consented, but they had taken only a few steps when he sank to the ground, and a gush of blood from his mouth terminated his existence.
CHAPTER VIII
Death of Dr. Schmidt opens doors for hosts of office-seekers and for Marie’s opponents—Hostilities of latter nullified by her methods, and by her continued professional success with patients and with both men and women students—After six months’ struggle with unabated animosities and intrigue, she resigns her position in the hospital. (Twenty-three years of age: 1852.)
I left Dr. Schmidt’s house, and entered alone into the wards, where I felt that I was without friendly encouragement and support. During the three days that intervened before the burial of Dr. Schmidt, I was hardly conscious of anything, but moved about mechanically like an automaton.
The next few days were days of confusion, for the death of Dr. Schmidt had left so many places vacant that some fifty persons were struggling to obtain some one of his offices. The eagerness, servility and meanness which these educated men displayed in striving to conquer their rivals was more than disgusting. The serpents that lie in wait for their prey are endurable, for we know that it is their nature to be cunning and relentless; but to see men of intellect and education sly and snaky, ferocious yet servile to the utmost, makes one almost believe in total depravity. The most of these men got what they deserved, namely, nothing. The places were filled temporarily with others, and everything went on apparently as before.
My position soon became very disagreeable. I had received my installment, not because I was wanted by the directors of the hospital, but because they had been commanded by the government to accept me, in the hope of thus prolonging the life of Dr. Schmidt.
Young and inexperienced in petty intrigue, I had now to work without friendly encouragement and appreciation, in an establishment where three thousand people were constantly at war about each other’s affairs; with no one about me in whom I had a special interest, while every one was regretting that the installment had been given me before Dr. Schmidt’s death which might have happened just as well from some other excitement. I surveyed the whole arena, and saw very well that, unless I practiced meanness and dishonesty as well as the rest, I could not remain there for any length of time, for scores were ready to calumniate me whenever there was the least thing to be gained by it.