When we were in the dining-hall, a major-domo brought us liqueurs and several piquant and highly spiced dishes on a silver salver to induce appetite, after a northern custom.
"Allow me, sir, in my office as doctor, to recommend a glass of that Starka, a true Cognac brandy casked forty years ago. It is a queen of liqueurs. Take a Drontheim anchovy; nothing is better for opening and preparing the digestive organs, the most important functions of the body.... And now to table. Why do we not speak in German? You come from Kœnigsberg, I from Memel; but I took my degree at Jéna. We shall be more at ease in that way, and the servants, who only know Polish and Russian, will not understand us."
We ate at first in silence; then, after having taken our first glass of Madeira, I inquired of the doctor if the Count were often inconvenienced by the indisposition which deprived us of his presence that night.
"Yes and no," was the doctor's answer. "It depends upon what expeditions he takes."
"How so?"
"When he takes the road to Rosienie, for instance, he comes back with headache, and in a savage temper."
"I have been to Rosienie myself without such an experience."
"It depends, Professor," he replied, laughing, "on whether you are in love."
I sighed, thinking of Mlle. Gertrude Weber.
"Does the Count's fiancée, then, live at Rosienie?" I said.