When Herr von Heydeck bought Reifenstein and passed some weeks there with his handsome wife, Dr. Putzer was a gay young fellow; he had studied well, understood his profession, and hoped to lead a pleasant life in Tausens. He soon found however that the position of a village doctor was by no means so pleasant or so lucrative as he had supposed, and that its income would never afford him the social enjoyments which he desired. He was fond of a glass of good wine, and he needed periodicals and scientific books to aid him in his studies. He had no mind for a hermit's life. The paltry fees which he received from his peasant patients but poorly sufficed for half his needs; he became deeply involved in debt, out of which he racked his brains in vain to find any means of extricating himself. Under these circumstances he thought it most fortunate that the wealthy Herr von Heydeck should buy Reifenstein, and that he should be sent for to visit the castle in his medical capacity. He took pains to recommend himself to the lord of the castle, whose love of scientific pursuits he humoured; and he succeeded. He became the confidant of Herr von Heydeck, who often bewailed to him the sorrow caused him by his unworthy wife, but never alluded to the past. It struck Putzer as very strange, this mystery enshrouding the past of Herr von Heydeck and his handsome wife. The husband lived in disgraceful dependence upon Madame von Heydeck's whims, never even venturing to remonstrate when Count Menotti publicly conducted himself as her declared lover. The mystery was explained for the doctor when Herr von Heydeck, after his wife's death, came to Castle Reifenstein with his child. When Putzer was sent for to see the boy, a single glance at the child told the physician of the criminal deception that had here been practised upon the world. The newspapers three months before had announced the birth of a boy; but the child who had inherited his mother's property was at least a year and a half old, and must have been born before Herr von Heydeck's marriage, which had taken place not quite a year previously. Herr von Heydeck, reading the doctor's thoughts in his face, could not refrain from giving him his entire confidence, especially since he needed his aid. He confessed to him that the infant was the child of the Count Menotti, and had been born some months before his own marriage. It was solely for the sake of bestowing an aristocratic name upon the child that its mother had consented to marry Heydeck, after he had promised in writing to acknowledge the child as his own within a year after their marriage. Within that time the intelligence of Frau von Heydeck's confinement was spread abroad in society, but the fruit of it, a boy, was pronounced so sickly and weak that no one except the nurse was allowed to see it.