Professor of Physiology and
his favourite student both sitting upon a very muddy bank and both
completely insensible. Before the hour was up quite a crowd had
assembled, and they were discussing the advisability of sending for an
ambulance to convey the pair to hospital, when the learned savant opened
his eyes and gazed vacantly around him. For an instant he seemed to
forget how he had come there, but next moment he astonished his audience
by waving his skinny arms above his head and crying out in a voice of
rapture, "Gott sei gedanket! I am myself again. I feel I am!" Nor was
the amazement lessened when the student, springing to his feet, burst
into the same cry, and the two performed a sort of pas de joie in the
middle of the road.
For some time after that people had some suspicion of the sanity of both
the actors in this strange episode. When the Professor published his
experiences in the Medicalschrift as he had promised, he was met by an
intimation, even from his colleagues, that he would do well to have
his mind cared for, and that another such publication would certainly
consign him to a madhouse. The student also found by experience that it
was wisest to be silent about the matter.
When the worthy lecturer returned home that night he did not receive
the cordial welcome which he might have looked for after his strange
adventures. On the contrary, he was roundly upbraided by both his female
relatives for smelling of drink and tobacco, and also for being absent
while a young scapegrace invaded the house and insulted its occupants.
It was long before the domestic atmosphere of the lecturer's house
resumed its normal quiet, and longer still before the genial face of
Von Hartmann was seen beneath its roof. Perseverance, however, conquers
every obstacle, and the student eventually succeeded in pacifying the
enraged ladies and in establishing himself upon the old footing. He
has now no longer any cause to fear the enmity of Madame, for he is
Hauptmann von Hartmann of the Emperor's own Uhlans, and his loving wife
Elise has already presented him with two little Uhlans as a visible sign
and token of her affection.
THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL.
On the fourth day of March, in the year 1867, being at that time in
my five-and-twentieth year, I wrote down the following words in my
note-book--the result of much mental perturbation and conflict:--
"The solar system, amidst a countless number of other systems as large
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