recollections, which crowded into his mind, jostling and pushing one
another aside in a ceaseless chase. For the sake of storing up strength
for the events to come, he would gladly have gone to sleep, but as he lay
there, whether with open or closed eyes, he saw past events with vivid
clearness.

The young man's career from his twentieth to his thirtieth year had not
departed from the conventional lines of his class. Ambition and great
aptitude in his specialty had won him the protection of eminent
scientists. He had been Professor Koch's assistant, and, without a
rupture of their friendly relations, had also studied several semesters
under Koch's opponent, Pettenkofer, in Munich. When he went to Rome for
the purpose of investigating malaria, he met Mrs. Thorn and her daughter,
who later became his wife and whose mind was now deranged. Angèle Thorn
brought him a considerable addition to his own small fortune. The
delicacy of her constitution caused him, eventually, to move with her and
the three children that had come to them to a healthy mountain district;
but the change did not interfere with his scientific work or professional
connections.

Thus it was that in Munich, Berlin, and other scientific centres, he had
been considered one of the most competent bacteriologists, a man whose
career had passed the stage of the problematical. The worst against
him--and that only in the opinion of the cut-and-dried among his
fellow-scientists, who shook their heads doubtfully--had been a certain
belletristic tendency. Now, however, that his abortive work had appeared
and he had suffered his great defeat, all serious scientists said it was
the cultivation of side interests that had weakened his strength and led
the promising young intellect along the path of self-destruction.