"I have a word to say to you about yourself too, Philosopher. I alluded to it a short time ago in your room, but Balder was present, who is just like a girl; there are certain things which cannot be mentioned before him. Listen man, this disorder of your nerves is entirely your own fault; it's a sin and shame for you to permit that sponge, the brain, to exhaust the best strength of the rest of your organization. How can there be any balance of power? I tell you your whole trouble is to be cured in one way."
"You may be right, Fritz," replied Edwin quietly, as they crossed the courtyard. "But you see it's the same with this medicine, as with the one you just prescribed for Balder. We have not the natures to take it, and if we should force ourselves to do so, the disease would attack a more vital spot."
"Nature, nature!" burst forth the doctor, looking almost fiercely at his friend through his gold spectacles. "I'll answer for it, my son, that your excellent nature, which you have tormented so long with your cursed abstract idealism, that it no longer ventures to grumble--would instantly recuperate and grow merry again, if you would only for once dismount from the high horse of speculation and rely upon your own good common sense. Deuce take it! A healthy fellow like you living on locusts and wild honey, like the hermits in the Theban deserts, and if a woman passes by your cave, exclaiming: Apage, Satanas! I had trouble with you even at the university. But now you seem to wish to continue this course, until nature, so shamefully abused for the sake of mere mind, is overstrained and fairly crazed with impatience."
"A very clever pathological lecture," replied Edwin smiling. "I will request the continuation in our next; there is always something to be learned. But for all that, Fritz, you wont get a kuppel'pelz[[3]] from me."
"Nonsense! Who's talking about any such thing? But if I, with my constantly increasing practice, can find time for little romances, in which the mind has employment--"
"And also the heart, my boy."
"Well, the heart too, for aught I care, though that muscle is greatly overestimated, and with all your sentimentality, only fit for a dangerous hypertrophy. I'm now on the track of a little witch--"
"A fair Helen or Galatea?"
"Aristocratic, my son, and unfortunately very unapproachable--so far. But what am I thinking about? You must have already made her acquaintance."
"I?"