prolong, seems to my eye of physician to hang on a thread. I have already
formed my own conjecture as to the nature of the disease that enfeebles
you. But I would fain compare that conjecture with the weightier opinion
of one whose experience and skill are superior to mine. Permit me, then,
when I return to you to-morrow, to bring with me the great physician to
whom I refer. His name will not, perhaps, be unknown to you: I speak of
Julius Faber."

"A physician of the schools! I can guess well enough how learnedly he
would prate, and how little he could do. But I will not object to his
visit, if it satisfies you that, since I should die under the hands of the
doctors, I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in placing my hopes in
a Dervish. Yet stay. You have, doubtless, spoken of me to this Julius
Faber, your fellow-physician and friend? Promise me, if you bring him
here, that you will not name me,--that you will not repeat to him the tale
I have told you, or the hope which has led me to these shores. What I
have told you, no matter whether, at this moment, you consider me the dupe
of a chimera, is still under the seal of the confidence which a patient
reposes in the physician he himself selects for his confidant. I select
you, and not Julius Faber!"

"Be it as you will," said I, after a moment's reflection. "The moment you
make yourself my patient, I am bound to consider what is best for you.
And you may more respect, and profit by, an opinion based upon your purely
physical condition than by one in which you might suppose the advice was
directed rather to the disease of the mind than to that of the body."

"How amazed and indignant your brother-physician will be if he ever see me
a second time! How learnedly he will prove that, according to all correct
principles of science and nature, I ought to be dead!"