"Yes, in that neighbourhood; but I cannot say whether she is affianced to him. She is a real flirt, and will drive him off his head, so that he will be in his mother's state."
"Indeed, then her ladyship is ... an invalid?"
"She is mad, my dear sir, mad; and I was even madder to come here!"
"Let us hope that your able attentions will restore her to reason."
The doctor shook his head, and looked attentively at the colour of the glass of Bordeaux which he held in his hand.
"The man you see before you, Professor, was once surgeon-major in the Kalouga regiment. At Sevastopol we cut off arms and legs from morning till night; not to speak of bombs which came down among us as thick as flies on a galled horse. But, though I was then ill-lodged and ill-fed, I was not so bored as I am here, where I eat and drink of the best, am lodged like a prince, and paid like a Court physician.... But liberty, my dear sir!... As you can guess, with this she-dragon I have not a moment to call my own."
"Has she been under your care for long?"
"Less than two years; but she has been insane at least twenty-seven, since before the birth of the Count. Did no one tell you this either at Rosienie or Kowno? Listen, then, for it is a case on which I should like some day to write an article for the Medical Journal of St. Petersburg. She went mad from fear...."
"From fear? How was such a thing possible?"
"She had a fright. She is of the house of Keystut.... Oh, there are no mésalliances in this house. We descend from the Gédymin.... Well, Professor, two or three days after her marriage, which took place in the castle where we are dining (I drink to your health ...), the Count, the father of the present one, went out hunting. Our Lithuanian ladies are regular amazons, you know. The Countess accompanied him to the hunt.... She stayed behind, or got in advance of the huntsmen,... I do not know which,... when, all at once, the Count saw the Countess's little Cossack, a lad of twelve or fourteen, come up at full gallop.