But his old servant—a woman of great sense—represented to him that this glorious enterprise had already cost him half of all he was worth; and that he would be obliged to sell his horse, his orchard, and his meadows, to print his Syriac notes. She begged him to think a little more of mundane matters, and to moderate his anthropo-zoological ardour. These judicious considerations greatly vexed Maître Frantz, but he could not help seeing that the good woman was right; he sighed deeply, and kept his aspirations after glory to himself. Now all this had happened a long time ago. Mathéus had returned to his habitual mode of life; he mounted his horse early in the morning to go and visit his patients; he returned late, harassed with fatigue; in the evening, instead of shutting himself up in his library, he went down into the garden to prune his vine, to clear his trees of caterpillars, and to hoe his lettuces; after supper, Jean-Claude Wachtmann the schoolmaster, Christian the _garde champêtre_, and a few gossips of the neighbourhood with their spinning-wheels dropped in. They all sat round a table, and chatted about the weather, Mathéus entertaining them with news of his patients; and, at nightfall, he went tranquilly to bed, to recommence on the morrow. Thus passed the days, months, and years. But this peaceful mode of existence could not console Maître Frantz for having missed his vocation. Often, in his distant rides, alone in the midst of the woods, he reproached himself for his fatal inaction: “Frantz,” he said to himself, “Graufthal is not the place for you! All those whom the Being of beings has made depositaries of the treasures of science belong to humanity. What will you answer to that Great Being when the time for rendering an account of yourself shall have come? Will He not say to you, in a voice of thunder: ‘Frantz Mathéus, I had gifted you with the most magnificent intelligence, I had unveiled to you things divine and human, I had destined you from the beginning of time to spread the lights of sound philosophy; where are your works? In vain for you to try to excuse yourself on the plea of its being necessary for you to attend to the sick; these vulgar duties were not made for you; others would have filled your place. Go, Frantz, go; you were not worthy of the confidence I placed in you, and I condemn you to redescend the ladder of being!’” Sometimes even the good soul woke himself in the middle of the night with crying out, “Frantz! Frantz! you are highly culpable!” His old servant would rush to his bedside in alarm, exclaiming— “Good heavens! what’s the matter?” “It is nothing—it is nothing,” Mathéus would answer; “I have had a bad dream—that’s all.” This moral condition of the illustrious doctor could not endure for ever; the repression of his metaphysical tendencies was too severe.