The Grand Duke's illness fell in the winter. Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, called away from his warm dry resort, arrived in snowy wet weather, which was as bad for his health as it could be. His brother, Klaus Heinrich, interrupted his educational tour, which was anyhow nearing its close, and returned with Captain von Braunbart-Schellendorf in all haste from the fair land of the South to the capital. Besides the two prince-sons, the Grand Duchess Dorothea, the Princesses Catherine and Ditlinde, Prince Lambert without his lovely wife--the surgeons in attendance and Prahl the valet-de-chambre waited at the bedside, while the Court officials and Ministers on duty were collected in the adjoining room. If credence might be given to the assertions of the servants, the ghostly noise in the "Owl Chamber" had been exceptionally loud in the last weeks and days. According to them it was a rattling and a shaking noise, which recurred periodically, and whose meaning could not be distinguished outside the room. Johann Albrecht's last act of Highness consisted in giving with his own hand to the professor, who had performed the useless operation with the greatest skill, his patent of nomination to the Privy Council. He was terribly exhausted, "sick of the whole thing," and his consciousness even in his more lucid moments was not at all clear; but he carried out the act with scrupulous care and made a ceremony of it. He had himself propped up, made a few alterations, shading his eyes with his wax-coloured hands, in the chance disposition of those present, ordered his sons to place themselves on both sides of his canopied bed--and while his soul was already tugging at her moorings, and floating here and there on unknown currents, he composed his features with mechanical skill into his smile of graciousness for the handing of the diploma to the Professor, who had left the room for a short time.