been independent. You
can scarcely imagine how the habit of accommodating one's self to
others, and not being over rigorous, will in time degrade a man who
originally is by no means a scoundrel. Ah me! when I think of the days
when, with your dead father, I still worked toward our so-called
ideals! Yet he died a bookkeeper, and I've written prescriptions in
which I felt no faith. The longer one lives, the more plainly one
perceives that there are very few mortals so happy as never to be
placed in a false position, and that since it's a man's duty to
preserve his life, there's but a single weakness that dishonors him: to
believe what is false to be true. A pastor who assumes the duties of
his parish a disbeliever in revealed religion, and gradually allows the
voice of reason to grow weaker and ends by accepting the tenets of the
faith he preaches, or a physician who begins the practice of his
profession by disbelief in his own powers and ends by using his salves
and plasters with a look of grave importance not wholly assumed--they
falsify themselves and are utterly contemptible. But he, who in a world
that is only too willing to be cheated, does not befool honest
individuals, but swindles men in the gross, and meantime is ready at
any moment, like the Roman augur, to laugh in unison with other clever
men, seems to me to play his part as a weak mortal very tolerably.
There was a famous Berlin doctor here yesterday, Herr Marquard, who's
perhaps known to you by reputation. He performs on a large scale, what
I practice here on a small one, and the fact of his being more learned
is rather troublesome to him than otherwise, since each individual case
gives him scores of things to reflect upon. But he's a clever man, and
after the first fifteen minutes we no longer tried to impose upon each
other. The gentleman was no more successful with the young countess
than I, but she didn't make him feel her contempt so keenly as she did
my insignificant self. Well, as you see, my back is naturally more bent
than my colleague's. I can take more on my high shoulders."

He laughed softly, but seemed surprised when Edwin's only reply to his
extreme outspokeness was a curt: "Every one is entitled to his own
opinions!" During the doctor's cautiously whispered speech, our friend
had glanced from one member of the company to the other and said to
himself: "These are the people with whose companionship she has been
obliged to be satisfied for fo