Then, holding out her snuff-box to me—­

“Do you take snuff?”

“No, dear madam, with many thanks.”

“That is a pity,” she answered, filling both nostrils.  “It is the most delightful habit.”

She slipped her snuff-box back into her apron pocket, and went on—­

“You are come not a bit too soon.  Monseigneur had his second attack yesterday; it was an awful attack, was it not, Monsieur Offenloch?”

“Furious indeed,” answered the head butler gravely.

“It is not surprising,” she continued, “when a man takes no nourishment.  Fancy, monsieur, that for two days he has never tasted broth!”

“Nor a glass of wine,” added the major-domo, crossing his hands over his portly, well-lined person.

As it seemed expected of me, I expressed my surprise, on which Tobias Offenloch came to sit at my right hand, and said—­

“Doctor, take my advice; order him a bottle a day of Marcobrunner.”

“And,” chimed in Marie Lagoutte, “a wing of a chicken at every meal.  The poor man is frightfully thin.”

“We have got Marcobrunner sixty years in bottle,” added the major-domo, “for it is a mistake of Madame Offenloch’s to suppose that the French drank it all.  And you had better order, while you are about it, now and then, a good bottle of Johannisberg.  That is the best wine to set a man up again.”

“Time was,” remarked the master of the hounds in a dismal voice—­“time was when monseigneur hunted twice a week; then he was well; when he left off hunting, then he fell ill.”

“Of course it could not be otherwise,” observed Marie Lagoutte.  “The open air gives you an appetite.  The doctor had better order him to hunt three times a week to make up for lost time.”

“Two would be enough,” replied the man of dogs with the same gravity; “quite enough.  The hounds must have their rest.  Dogs have just as much right to rest as we have.”

There was a few moments’ silence, during which I could hear the wind beating against the window-panes, and rush, sighing and wailing, through the loopholes into the towers.

Sebalt sat with legs across, and his elbow resting on his knee, gazing into the fire with unspeakable dolefulness.  Marie Lagoutte, after having refreshed herself with a fresh pinch, was settling her snuff into shape in its box, while I sat thinking on the strange habit people indulge in of pressing their advice upon those who don’t want it.

At this moment the major-domo rose.

“Will you have a glass of wine, doctor?” said he, leaning over the back of my arm-chair.

“Thank you, but I never drink before seeing a patient.”

“What! not even one little glass?”

“Not the smallest glass you could offer me.”

He opened his eyes wide and looked with astonishment at his wife.

“The doctor is right,” she said.  “I am quite of his opinion.  I prefer to drink with my meat, and to take a glass of cognac afterwards.  That is what the ladies do in France.  Cognac is more fashionable than kirschwasser!”