For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the gentleman's own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and the kitchens.
The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely anxious and troubled. 'Such a charming person, and so handsome,' she said again and again. 'I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with him.' Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always discreetly mute at Hohenszalras.
For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her—of the bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of her doctor's counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner's Inn, greatly to his own discomfort, her own confessor.
'Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,' she said to her niece; 'and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the dying.'
'But no one is dying,' said Wanda, a little impatiently.
'That is more than any human being can tell,' said the Princess, piously. 'At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion judiciously and well.'
Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for administration of the Sacrament.
The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault of the physician, and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on spiritual belief as soon as he should return.
'If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,' she said severely.
'He is orthodox, dear aunt,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. 'He adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little moss that clothes the rocks.'