Where there are lights there must be shadows, and where there are shadows there is never a lack of people who take pleasure in painting everything in the darkest and blackest of colors. Thus it was with the little foibles of the excellent man, which his rivals and enemies subjected to pitiless criticism. Some declared he was a charlatan, who understood his business tolerably well, but the necessary bragging and boasting about it still better; others declared his bon-mots were better than his prescriptions, and a good story more welcome to him than the most famous case in his practice. Still others said that the essence of his nature was a restless vanity, which induced him to try all the arts and to play the Mæcenas for all travelling artists and spoilt men of genius. Still others--so-called practical men, who laid no claim to any opinion in matters of art and science, but who demanded in return that everybody should comply with their standard of morality--shook their heads when people spoke of the councillor's hospitality, and said: "If everybody would sweep the dust before his own door, many things would be seen that are hidden now; and if certain folks would remember the old saying: 'Save in time and you'll have in need,' they would be better off than they were." Of all these reproaches none really affected the distinguished professor, except the last. Money was to him what it is to Saladin in Lessing's great drama, Nathan: "the most trifling of trifles;" he looked upon it, as Saladin did, as "perfectly superfluous when he had it," much as he appreciated the necessity of being provided with it whenever he was reminded of it by his liberality, his generosity, and his intense antipathy against all bargaining and all haggling. If he had lived economically he might have become a very rich man, for his income was considerable; but Mammon would not stay in his hands, which were ever open to all who were poor and suffering. He never could force himself to accept money from the hard hand of a mechanic, even if the sum had been ever so small. "It is bad enough," he used to say, "that Nature has not wisdom enough to allow only such people to be sick as have leisure and money enough for it; but for the poor, sickness itself is a punishment severe enough, not to sentence them moreover into the payment of costs." Thus it happened to him very often that he poured the golden reward he had earned by his attention and his skill in the palace of rich Sinbad a few minutes later into the open hand of poor Hinbad, and reached home with a lighter purse than he had carried out.