So after many wanderings in divers lands, he came, as wise men will, to London, and set up his household gods in a vast plane-tree-planted square (with cat ground in the middle called a garden), and of which the residents each had a key, but never walked in, sat in, or used in any way, though all of them would have gone to the stake rather than see a member of the public enter into its sacred precincts, or a stray child play in it, unless attended by a nurse.
Honours and fees fell thick on Rothenberger, and he became greatly belettered, member of many a learned, dull society. He duly purchased a degree; and squares and crescents quite a mile away sent out their patients, and were filled with the sonorous glory of his name. One thing was wanting, and that one thing troubled him not a little; but he yet saw it was inevitable if he would rise to Harley Street or Saville Row, and the sleek pair of horses which (without bearing-reins) testify to a doctor’s status in the scientific world. A wife, or as he said, a “real legitimate,” to prove to all his patients that he was a moral man. Strange that the domestic arrangements of a public man should militate for or against him; but so it is, at least in England, where even if a man cheat and spread ruin to thousands, yet he may find apologists, chiefly, of course, amongst that portion of the public who have not suffered by his delinquencies, so that his life be what is known as pure. Morals and purity in our group of islands seem to condone drunkenness, lies, and even theft (so that the sum stolen be large enough), and to have crystallized themselves into a censorship of precisely the very thing as to which no man or woman has the right to call another to account.
So Rothenberger, looking about for a vessel by means of which to purify himself (and push his business), lit on a girl with money, living, as he said, “oot by Hampstead way;” went through the process known as courting, in a mixture of German and of English, eked out with Plaat-Deutsch, and finally induced the lady to fix the day on which to make him pure. Science and business jointly having so taken up his time that he had learnt but little English, he was at some loss, and left arrangements to the family of his intended wife.