condition,--repose. I enjoin you
to abstain from all violent action, to shun all excitements that cause
moral disturbance. You are young: would you live on, you must live as
the old. More than this,--it is my duty to warn you that your tenure
on earth is very precarious; you may attain to many years; you may be
suddenly called hence tomorrow. The best mode to regard this uncertainty
with the calm in which is your only chance of long life, is so to
arrange all your worldly affairs, and so to discipline all your human
anxieties, as to feel always prepared for the summons that may come
without warning. For the rest, quit this climate as soon as you can,--it
is the climate in which the blood courses too quickly for one who should
shun all excitement. Seek the most equable atmosphere, choose the most
tranquil pursuits; and Fenwick himself, in his magnificent pride of
stature and strength, may be nearer the grave than you are."

"Your opinion coincides with that I have just heard?" asked Margrave,
turning to me.

"In much--yes."

"It is more favourable than I should have supposed. I am far from
disdaining the advice so kindly offered. Permit me, in turn, two or
three questions, Dr. Faber. Do you prescribe to me no drugs from your
pharmacopoeia?"

"Drugs may palliate many sufferings incidental to organic disease, but
drugs cannot reach organic disease itself."

"Do you believe that, even where disease is plainly organic, Nature
herself has no alternative and reparative powers, by which the organ
assailed may recover itself?"

"A few exceptional instances of such forces in Nature are upon record;
but we must go by general laws, and not by exceptions."

"Have you never known instances--do you not at this moment know one--in
which a patient whose malady baffles the doctor's skill, imagines or
dreams of a remedy? Call it a whim if you please, learned sir; do you
not listen to the whim, and, in despair of your own prescriptions,
comply with those of the patient?"

Faber changed countenance, and even started. Margrave watched him and
laughed.

"You grant that there are such cases, in which the patient gives the law
to the physician. Now, apply your experience to my case. Suppose some
strange fancy had seized upon my imagination--that is the doctor's cant
word for all phenomena which we call exceptional--some strange fancy
that I had thought of a cure for this disease for which you have no
drugs; and suppose this fancy of