_Ille_ (sighing).--"The future will tell that." "Oh, woe is me! what must I live to hear? If thy father could look up from his grave, and see thee disgracing thy princely blood by a marriage with a bower maiden!--. thou traitorous, disobedient son, do not lie to me. I know from thy sighs what thy purpose is--for this thou art going to Stettin and Berlin."
The Prince is silent, and looks down upon the ground.
_Her Grace_.--"Oh, shame on thee! shame on thee for the sake of thy mother! shame on thee for the sake of this servant of God, thy second father, this old man here! What! a vile knave strike thy mother, before the face of all the court, and thou condemnest him because he avenged her! Truly thou art a fine, brave son, to let thy mother be struck before thy face, for the sake of a harlot. Canst thou deny it? I conjure thee by the living God, tell me is it thy true purpose to take this harlot to thy wife?"
_Ille_.--"He could give but one answer, the future would decide."
_Her Grace_ (weeping).--"Oh, she was reserved for all misfortunes! Why did Doctor Martinus let her ring fall? All, all has followed from that! If he had chosen a good, humble, honest girl, she would say nothing; but this wanton, this light maiden, that ran after every carl and let them court her!"
Here the young Prince was seized with such violent convulsions that he fell upon the floor, and her Grace raised him up with loud lamentations. He was carried in a dead faint to his chamber, and the court physician, Doctor Pomius, instantly summoned. Doctor Pomius was a pompous little man (for my father knew him well), dry and smart in his words, and with a face like a pair of nutcrackers, for his front teeth were gone, so that his lips seemed dried on his gums, like the skin of a mummy. He was withal too self-conceited and boastful, and malicious, full of gossip and ill-nature, and running down every one that did not believe that he (Doctor Pomius) was the only learned physician in the world. Following the celebrated rules laid down by Theophrastus Paracelsus, he cured everything with trash--and asses' dung was his infallible panacea for all complaints. This pharmacopoeia was certainly extremely simple, easily obtained, and universal in its application. If the dung succeeded, the doctor drew himself up, tossed his head, and exclaimed, "What Doctor Pomius orders always succeeds." But if the wretched patient slipped out of his hands into the other world, he shook his head and said, "There is an hour for every man to die; of course his had come--physicians cannot work miracles."