now, in token of its gratitude,
the evil demon of the medical guild has dealt you this blow. But you must
get well again.

I am off for America. When we see each other again, you will learn why.
I can be of no use to my wife. With Binswanger, she is in excellent
hands. Three weeks ago, when I visited her, she did not even recognise
me.

I have finished forever with my profession and my medical and
bacteriological studies. I have had ill luck, you know. My scientific
reputation has been torn to shreds. They say it was fuzz instead of the
exciting organism of anthrax that I examined in a dye and wrote about.
Perhaps, but I don't think so. At any rate, the thing is a matter of
indifference to me.

Sometimes I am thoroughly disgusted with the clownish tricks the world
plays upon us, and I feel an approach to English spleen. Nearly the whole
world, or, at least Europe, has turned into a cold dish on a station
lunch-counter, and I have no appetite for it.

* * * * *

He wound up with cordial lines to his dying friend, and handed the letter
to a German porter to mail.

In his room, the temperature was icy, the window-panes frozen over.
Without undressing he lay down in one of two vast, chilly beds.

At best, the frame of mind of a traveller with a night's journey behind
him and an ocean crossing ahead of him, is not enviable. Frederick's
condition was aggravated by a whirl of painful, partially warring
recollections, which crowded into his mind, jostling and pushing one
another aside in a ceaseless chase. For the sake of storing up strength
for the events to come, he would gladly have gone to sleep, but as he lay
there, whether with open or closed eyes, he saw past events with vivid
clearness.

The young man's career from his twentieth to his thirtieth year had not
departed from the conventional lines of his class. Ambition and great
aptitude in his specialty had won him the protection of eminent
scientists. He had been Professor Koch's assistant, and, without a
rupture of their friendly relations, had also studied several semesters
under Koch's opponent, Pettenkofer, in Munich. When he went to Rome for
the purpose of investigating malaria, he met Mrs. Thorn and her daughter,
who later became his wife and whose mind was now deranged. Angele Thorn
brought him a considerable addition to his own small fortune. The
delicacy of her constitution caused him, eventually, to move with her and