was replaced by the
second.

"Don't be surprised if I am immoderate," said Frederick. "My nerves are
in need of it to-day. I have to stupefy myself. Perhaps, with the help of
this glorious medicine, I shall be able to sleep a few hours."

It was half past ten, and the physicians were still sitting together. The
wine naturally produced a greater degree of intimacy between these two
men, who were of the same profession and had already become fairly well
acquainted with each other. It was very pleasant to Frederick to unbosom
himself.

He said he had entered the world with too favourable a preconceived
notion. In a spirit of idealism he had refused the military career
for which his father had intended him, and had taken up the study
of medicine, in the belief that he would thus be of most service to
humanity. He had been deceived.

"The genuine gardener works for the garden full of healthy plants; but
our work is devoted to a decaying vegetation sprung from diseased germs.
That is why I took up the fight against mankind's awfullest enemy, the
bacteria. I admit that the dreary, patient, laborious work, which
bacteriology requires, did not satisfy me, either. I didn't possess the
capacity to petrify, which is absolutely indispensable in an academic
man. When I was sixteen years old, I wanted to become a painter. Over the
dissecting table, I composed verses. The thing that I should now most
like to be is a freelance writer. From all of which you can see," he
concluded, laughing ironically, "that I have made rather a mess of my
life."

Wilhelm refused to admit it.

"But I have," Frederick declared. "I am a genuine child of the times, and
I am not ashamed of it. The greatest intellects of the day are all in a
state of inner ferment. Every individual of significance is just as
divided against himself as humanity on the whole. I refer, of course,
only to the leading European races. I embody the Pope and Luther, William
II and Robespierre, Bismarck and Bebel, the spirit of the American
millionaire and the enthusiasm for poverty that was the glory of St.
Francis of Assisi. I am the maddest progressive of my time and the
maddest reactionary. I despise Americanism, and yet I see in the great
American world-invasion, the dominion of the exploiter, something similar
to one of the biggest works that Hercules performed in the Augean
stables."

"Here's to chaos!" cried Wilhelm.

They touched glasses.

"Yes," said Frederick,