"To be sure!" laughed the new arrival. "It requires the presence of a despicable empiric like myself, to make the Herr Philosopher aware that the sun is several hours high in the heavens. Well, how are you, patient? Has the prescription wrought its work? I am almost inclined to believe that the dose was too strong."
Nodding kindly to Balder, he hastily approached the bed and touched Edwin's brow and temples before feeling his pulse. The keen, light gray eyes gazed through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles at a heavy gold watch, and the youthfully round and regular, though somewhat pale face, which on entering the door had worn an expression of the gayest unconcern, now assumed a quiet, watchful air, while the elegant figure, which was of about the medium height, leaned lightly on a chair beside the bed.
"My dear Herr Medicinalrath," said Edwin, "your master work has been performed on me. Mother Nature, who may well fear you since you irreverently pry into her most sacred secrets and scan all her little weaknesses as through a microscope, seems, at your command, to have once more taken pity upon me, and granted me sleep. All else will follow as a matter of course; at least I already feel a truly wolfish appetite. If you'll allow me. Doctor, I'll only put on the most necessary articles of clothing, and go to breakfast at once, to relieve Balder, who I see has again waited for me."
"Probatum est," laughed the doctor, pocketing his watch. "I was perfectly well aware, that for brains like yours, there is no better narcotic than the mixture of folly, noise, and tights, we men of the world swallow to excite us. I find your symptoms to-day far more encouraging than yesterday, and, within a few days, I think I shall repeat the dose. Hunger is a good symptom. But I don't see the breakfast."
"It is standing on the table yonder," said Balder, quietly.
The doctor stepped to the little table, which, covered with a green cloth, stood in the middle of the room, and gazed, with an indescribable look of pity and horror, at the white pitcher, which stood between two stoneware cups, while a tin plate beside it contained two small rolls.
"Pardon me," said he, "my science does not extend so far as to enable me to determine, by its mere appearance, the name of the strong broth which awaits you here as your first meal."
"It is pure, unadulterated milk, in which we dip the flower of wheat," said Edwin, who, having in the meantime hastily clothed himself, now approached the table and filled both cups. "You are doubtless aware, my dear fellow, that milk contains all the elements of nourishment which--"
"Which a child in swaddling clothes needs till it cuts its teeth! Sacred Reason, what is the world coming to, when your ablest votaries, the philosophers, confess themselves addicted to the most preposterous habits and customs. Are you not startled, my lad, by the frightful contradiction involved by your endeavor, amidst our exhaustive, enervating civilization, which constitutes such a drain upon the blood and marrow, to sustain yourself on the nourishment of stupid pastoral tribes? In Berlin, too, where as you know, all the cows are infected with the pallor of the Hegel philosophy, and where the watery fluid they give is still further diluted at every pump. No, my dear fellow, either I give you up as incurable, or you must decide at once upon a radical change of habit, wash your face with this innocent fluid--an admirable preventive of premature wrinkles--and moisten your inner man at this time with a glass of port wine, to be followed by the consumption of half a pound of roast meat. I'll wager that in a short time there will be a change in your organism which will make itself perceptibly felt if you visit the Berlin ballet too frequently. What are you laughing at? I am perfectly serious."
"That is just why I laughed," said Edwin, as, standing by the table, he quietly broke his roll into the thin blue milk. "You forget, my dear fellow, that I can only make use of prescriptions which are put up at the pharmacy 'for lucky beggars.' Or do you happen to have it in your pocket?"