DR. DE SCHULEMBOURG was the most eminent physician in Dresden. He was not only a physician; he was a philosopher. He studied the idiosyncrasy of his patients, and was aware of the fine and secret connection between medicine and morals. One morning Dr. de Schulembourg was summoned to Walstein. The physician looked forward to the interview with his patient with some degree of interest. He had often heard of Walstein, but had never yet met that gentleman, who had only recently returned from his travels, and who had been absent from his country for several years.

When Dr. de Schulembourg arrived at the house of Walstein, he was admitted into a circular hall containing the busts of the Caesars, and ascending a double staircase of noble proportion, was ushered into a magnificent gallery. Copies in marble of the most celebrated ancient statues were ranged on each side of this gallery. Above them were suspended many beautiful Italian and Spanish pictures, and between them were dwarf bookcases full of tall volumes in sumptuous bindings, and crowned with Etruscan vases and rare bronzes. Schulembourg, who was a man of taste, looked around him with great satisfaction. And while he was gazing on a group of diaphanous cherubim, by Murillo, an artist of whom he had heard much and knew little, his arm was gently touched, and turning round, Schulembourg beheld his patient, a man past the prime of youth, but of very distinguished appearance, and with a very frank and graceful manner. ‘I hope you will pardon me, my dear sir, for permitting you to be a moment alone,’ said Walstein, with an ingratiating smile.

‘Solitude, in such a scene, is not very wearisome,’ replied the physician. ‘There are great changes in-this mansion since the time of your father, Mr. Walstein.’

‘’Tis an attempt to achieve that which we are all sighing for,’ replied Walstein, ‘the Ideal. But for myself, although I assure you not a pococurante, I cannot help thinking there is no slight dash of the commonplace.’

‘Which is a necessary ingredient of all that is excellent,’ replied Schulembourg.

Walstein shrugged his shoulders, and then invited the physician to be seated. ‘I wish to consult you, Dr. Schulembourg,’ he observed, somewhat abruptly. ‘My metaphysical opinions induce me to believe that a physician is the only philosopher. I am perplexed by my own case. I am in excellent health, my appetite is good, my digestion perfect. My temperament I have ever considered to be of a very sanguine character. I have nothing upon my mind. I am in very easy circumstances. Hitherto I have only committed blunders in life and never crimes. Nevertheless, I have, of late, become the victim of a deep and inscrutable melancholy, which I can ascribe to no cause, and can divert by no resource. Can you throw any light upon my dark feelings? Can you remove them?’

‘How long have you experienced them?’ inquired the physician.

‘More or less ever since my return,’ replied Walstein; ‘but most grievously during the last three months.’

‘Are you in love?’ inquired Schulembourg.

‘Certainly not,’ replied Walstein, ‘and I fear I never shall be.’

‘You have been?’ inquired the physician.

‘I have had some fancies, perhaps too many,’ answered the patient; ‘but youth deludes itself. My idea of a heroine has never been realised, and, in all probability, never will be.’

‘Besides an idea of a heroine,’ said Schulembourg, ‘you have also, if I mistake not, an idea of a hero?’

‘Without doubt,’ replied Walstein. ‘I have preconceived for myself a character which I have never achieved.’

‘Yet, if you have never met a heroine nearer your ideal than your hero, why should you complain?’ rejoined Schulembourg.

‘There are moments when my vanity completes my own portrait,’ said Walstein.

‘And there are moments when our imagination completes the portrait of our mistress,’ rejoined Schulembourg.

‘You reason,’ said Walstein. ‘I was myself once fond of reasoning, but the greater my experience, the more I have become convinced that man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.’

‘Passion is the ship, and reason is the rudder,’ observed Schulembourg.

‘And thus we pass the ocean of life,’ said Walstein. ‘Would that I could discover a new continent of sensation!’

‘Do you mix much in society?’ said the physician.

‘By fits and starts,’ said Walstein. ‘A great deal when I first returned: of late little.’

‘And your distemper has increased in proportion with your solitude?’

‘It would superficially appear so,’ observed Walstein; ‘but I consider my present distemper as not so much the result of solitude, as the reaction of much converse with society. I am gloomy at present from a sense of disappointment of the past.’

‘You are disappointed,’ observed Schulembourg. ‘What, then, did you expect?’

‘I do not know,’ replied Walstein; ‘that is the very thing I wish to discover.’

‘How do you in general pass your time?’ inquired the physician.

‘When I reply in doing nothing, my dear Doctor,’ said Walstein, ‘you will think that you have discovered the cause of my disorder. But perhaps you will only mistake an effect for a cause.’

‘Do you read?’

‘I have lost the faculty of reading: early in life I was a student, but books become insipid when one is rich with the wisdom of a wandering life.’

‘Do you write?’

‘I have tried, but mediocrity disgusts me. In literature a second-rate reputation is no recompense for the evils that authors are heirs to.’

‘Yet, without making your compositions public, you might relieve your own feelings in expressing them. There is a charm in creation.’

‘My sympathies are strong,’ replied Walstein. ‘In an evil hour I might descend from my pedestal; I should compromise my dignity with the herd; I should sink before the first shaft of ridicule.’

‘You did not suffer from this melancholy when travelling?’

‘Occasionally: but the fits were never so profound, and were very evanescent.’

‘Travel is action,’ replied Schulembourg. ‘Believe me, that in action you alone can find a cure.’

‘What is action?’ inquired Walstein. ‘Travel I have exhausted. The world is quiet. There are no wars now, no revolutions. Where can I find a career?’

‘Action,’ replied Schulembourg, ‘is the exercise of our faculties. Do not mistake restlessness for action. Murillo, who passed a long life almost within the walls of his native city, was a man of great action. Witness the convents and the churches that are covered with his exploits. A great student is a great actor, and as great as a marshal or a statesman. You must act, Mr. Walstein, you must act; you must have an object in life; great or slight, still you must have an object. Believe me, it is better to be a mere man of pleasure than a dreamer.’

‘Your advice is profound,’ replied Walstein, ‘and you have struck upon a sympathetic chord. But what am I to do? I have no object.’

‘You are a very ambitious man,’ replied the physician.

‘How know you that?’ said Walstein, somewhat hastily, and slightly blushing.

‘We doctors know many strange things,’ replied Schulembourg, with a smile. ‘Come now, would you like to be prime minister of Saxony?’

‘Prime minister of Oberon!’ said Walstein, laughing; ‘’tis indeed a great destiny.’

‘Ah! when you have lived longer among us, your views will accommodate themselves to our limited horizon. In the meantime, I will write you a prescription, provided you promise to comply with my directions.’

‘Do not doubt me, my dear Doctor.’

Schulembourg seated himself at the table, and wrote a few lines, which he handed to his patient.

Walstein smiled as he read the prescription.

‘Dr. de Schulembourg requests the honour of the Baron de Walstein’s company at dinner, to-morrow at two o’clock.’

Walstein smiled and looked a little perplexed, but he remembered his promise. ‘I shall, with pleasure, become your guest, Doctor.’