CHAPTER VI.

Dorothea Stettin falls sick, and how the doctor manages to
bleed her--Item, how Sidonia chases the princely commissioners
into the oak-forest.


Such a public humiliation the good virgin Dorothea Stettin found
it impossible to bear. She fell sick, and repented with bitter
tears of the trust and confidence she had reposed in Sidonia;
finally, the abbess sent off a message to Stargard for the
medicus, Dr. Schwalenberg.

This doctor was an excellent little man, rather past middle age
though still unmarried, upright and honest, but rough as
bean-straw. When he stood by Dorothea's bed and had heard all
particulars of her illness, he bid her put out her hand, that he
might feel her pulse. "No, no;" she answered, "that could she
never do; never in her life had a male creature felt her pulse."
At this my doctor laughed right merrily, and all the nuns who
stood round, and Sidonia's old maid, Wolde, laughed likewise; but
at last he persuaded Dorothea to stretch out her hand.

"I must bleed her," said the doctor. "This is febris
putrida; therefore was her thirst so great: she must strip her
arm till he bleed her." But no one can persuade her to this--strip
her arm! no, never could she do it; she would die first: if the