Such a public humiliation the good virgin Dorothea Stettin found it impossible to bear. She fell sick, and repented with bitter tears of the trust and confidence she had reposed in Sidonia; finally, the abbess sent off a message to Stargard for the medicus, Dr. Schwalenberg.
This doctor was an excellent little man, rather past middle age though still unmarried, upright and honest, but rough as bean-straw. When he stood by Dorothea's bed and had heard all particulars of her illness, he bid her put out her hand, that he might feel her pulse. "No, no;" she answered, "that could she never do; never in her life had a male creature felt her pulse." At this my doctor laughed right merrily, and all the nuns who stood round, and Sidonia's old maid, Wolde, laughed likewise; but at last he persuaded Dorothea to stretch out her hand.
"I must bleed her," said the doctor. "This is febris putrida; therefore was her thirst so great: she must strip her arm till he bleed her." But no one can persuade her to this—strip her arm! no, never could she do it; she would die first: if the doctor could do nothing else, he may go his ways.
Now the doctor grew angry. Such a cursed fool of a woman he had never come across in his life; if she did not strip her arm instantly, he would do it by force. But Dorothea is inflexible; say what he would, she would strip her arm for no man!
Even the abbess and the sisterhood tried to persuade her.
"Would she not do it for her health's sake; or, at least, for the sake of peace?"
They were all here standing round her, but all in vain. At last the doctor, half-laughing, half-cursing, said—
"He would bleed her in the foot. Would that do?"
"Yes, she would consent to that; but the doctor must leave the room while she was getting ready."
So my doctor went out, but on entering again found her sitting on the bed, dressed in her full convent robes, her head upon Anna Apenborg's shoulder, and her foot upon a stool. As the foot, however, was covered with a stocking, the doctor began to scold.