Atlantis | Page 3

we approached a bare bush or tree, it would suddenly
sway to and fro and scatter gold leaves. We interpreted that as meaning
mountains of gold. In the evening we dined on goldfinches, because the

hunters who went out on Sundays sold them in great quantities and my
tippling cook cooked them deliciously. At that time you swore you
would not remain a physician. You were not to live from the pockets of
poor patients; the State was to salary you and put at your disposal a
huge store of provisions, so that you could supply your impoverished
patients with flour, wine, meat and necessities. And 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. Angèle Thorn brought him a considerable addition to his
own small fortune. The delicacy of her constitution caused him,
eventually, to move with her and the three children that had come to
them to a healthy mountain district; but the change did not interfere
with his scientific work or professional connections.
Thus it was that in Munich, Berlin, and other scientific centres, he had
been considered one of the most competent bacteriologists, a man
whose career had passed the stage of the problematical. The worst
against him--and that only in the opinion of the cut-and-dried among
his fellow-scientists, who shook their heads doubtfully--had been a
certain belletristic tendency. Now, however, that his abortive work had
appeared and he had suffered his great defeat, all serious scientists said
it was the cultivation of side interests that had weakened his strength
and led the promising young intellect along the path of self-destruction.
In his icy room in the English hotel, Frederick meditated on his past.
"I see three threads which the Parcæ have woven into my life. The
snapping of the thread that represents my scientific career leaves me
utterly indifferent. The bloody tearing of the other thread"--he had in
mind his love for his wife--"makes the first event insignificant. But
even though I should still hold a place among the most hopeful of the
younger generation of scientists, the third thread, which is still whole,
which pierces my soul like a live wire, would have nullified my

ambitions and all my endeavours in science."
The third thread was a passion.
Frederick von Kammacher had gone to Paris to rid himself of this
passion; but the object of it, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Swedish
teacher of stage dancing, held