"You shall hear all. As I said before, I wished to keep it from you, as I didn't know what impression it might make upon you, to suddenly find yourself so near your old love. You know I've always had a great regard for your wife, and have thought that no one could suit you better. I hoped you'd be drawn toward each other by degrees and so regain your full health. But when you began in such a heels-overhead fashion and were so suddenly betrothed, I, as an experienced psychologist, couldn't help shaking my head. Such speedy cures are rarely permanent; they denote injury to some other organ. But the way in which you speak of your domestic happiness, reassures me! I don't think I risk anything, when I say, your old friend, in spite of her countess' coronet, has made a worse match, than if she had taken the head master, Edwin."
"Unhappy? Poor thing! Does he ill treat her?"
"There!" said Marquard, "after all it will be better for me to keep what I know to myself. It seems to me you can't yet, with the necessary objectivity--"
"Don't torture me with delays and evasions!" exclaimed Edwin. "How could I remain perfectly unmoved, when I heard that a creature once so dear to me has such a hard fate to endure? But I assure you, even if I heard it from her own lips, no other thought would enter my mind than that an unhappy woman was lamenting her sufferings and had claims upon my brotherly sympathy. The time when she could have bound me with a hair of her head and forced me to do her will, is gone forever."
"Well then, listen," replied the physician. "Perhaps, as pious people say, it's a dispensation of Providence, that I've found you here, since I've been able to do nothing myself.
"A fortnight ago, I received a letter from a Count ----, who invited me to his castle for a consultation. An address was enclosed, which left me in no doubt that he was the richest of the counts of the name, and the lady in question no other than our old friend. You'll understand that I was curious to see her again. Adeline, who is far too generous to be jealous, eagerly urged me to go. I had sent most of my patients to various springs, so I set off at once and reached the place on the third day.
"The count had sent a carriage to meet me at the station, as it was a two hour's ride to the castle which was situated in the heart of the mountains. But the drive didn't seem long; on the way I renewed another old acquaintance, that of our little Jean, who's grown taller since his unlucky drinking bout, but is not much more mature. The lad still stares at the world with the same zealous boyish eyes he had in Jägerstrasse. I tried to pump him, but his information never went beyond the external magnificence that surrounded his master and mistress. To judge from his story, there was no happier, more enviable or charitable creature on the face of the earth, than his lady, the countess, and as she, according to his account drove out daily, rode horseback, or took long walks, never sparing herself or uttering any complaint, there didn't seem to be the least occasion for having summoned so distinguished a physician as your old friend, from so great a distance to feel her pulse.
"The first conversation I held with her husband certainly made a great change in my opinion. I found your successful rival an entirely different man from what I had imagined, a person really needing pity, who finds no enjoyment in all he possesses, money, lands, a noble name, and a long line of ancestors, and who is not happy though in the prime of life and surrounded by the utmost splendor.
"The style of the house I can only term ducal! A magnificent castle, forests such as I've seen only in Russia, a four-in-hand of which no prince need be ashamed, a kitchen and cellar that considerably enlarged the horizon even of the author of the 'Art of Eating.' The ten days I spent in the castle gave me an idea of the enviableness of the genuine old nobility, living regardless of expense and not yet infected by the industrial spirit of our times.
"The count himself, who has grown up amid these surroundings, is a gentleman from head to foot, every inch a cavalier, a man who can talk admirably about hunting and the ballet, and from whom, without the smallest conscientious scruple, one can win a few hundred louis d'ors at whist. That's however probably the best thing to be had of him; for in other respects--but perhaps I'm unjust, I could not help continually comparing him with you and asking myself--without wishing to flatter you--in what way he'd have got the start of you, if you had both appeared before our princess on equal terms. He seemed to me like a beautifully carved, richly gilded old picture frame, containing a cheap, poorly colored lithograph. But, as I said before, my old prejudice in your favor may have played me a trick.