“If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to that nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron, almost, I might dare to say, my friend.”
“Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with other French news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of my own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He is a man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge of what is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the physician paused—“of you!”
“Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?”
“He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows up in the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, between Leaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic nor Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay! He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how none would help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one nobleman whose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help by helping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw his hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for considering that an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivingly writing to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I might,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery and disfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!”
“I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority and restraint are within.”
The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” He went to the window and set it wider so that the whole green garden and white and rosy branches of bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” he said, with his back to the lattice, “myself a theologian. By nature I am a ‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will not quarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant, Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpate others—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touch another! It were base ingratitude, for instance, were you—”
“I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention your name to no one. I have led since seeing you a retired and soundless life. I am a stranger in this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest in it.”
The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I did not know of what folly you might not have been capable!” He stroked the cat, moved a few paces about the room and returned. “I regret that I can give you no aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that I owe it to my family and my patients and my place—which is no slight one—in the esteem of this city, to refuse all association with a man who at any hour may fall under suspicion and prosecution.” He paused. “I may say to you once, and this once only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainly advise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the world to conform to the world. Philosophize, if you choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!”
He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was apparent that Aderhold had taken his dismissal, that he was not going to beg or be distressful. He considered through the open casement the height of the sun. He could give the unfortunate man a minute or two longer. “Let us speak a moment,” he said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors. I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, even were the circumstances not as they are, and you were as like others as you are unlike. However still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you may betray yourself oftener than you think,—you will eventually be found out.” He lifted his finger impressively. “Now the temper of the time is religious and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique spirit that I remember is going—is almost gone. We are all theologians and damn the whole world outside of our particular ark. People of the old faith, people of the established faith, people of the Presbytery—each of the three detests and will persecute the remaining two. Right and left suffer from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—and the remaining other—would suffer were the right or left in power. War, secret or open, war, war! and they only unite to plague a witch or to run to earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs not to right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, humane, philosophic heart dissents—but few, my friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, too few! All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in London—no, I should not, were you Galen himself!”
Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. There were thorn hedges everywhere—across all paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I should go—”