Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/276

 to youth, herein less successful than Count Cogliostro, who, as they say, by some mysterious process, contrived to retain a vigorous life for three hundred years. On the old doctor’s death, his widow inherited his large fortune and valuable manuscripts. Feeling no disposition to a second marriage, she had amused herself in her widowhood with the study of her late husband’s writings, and had by this means acquired not only a rare acquaintance with the more hidden secrets of nature, but also such a knowledge of physic, and thereby, after awhile, so high a reputation, that the University of Padua had conferred upon her a doctor’s degree, and appointed her to a public professorship of medicine. But the occult sciences had ever been her favourite study, which, coming to the knowledge of the ignorant vulgar, great and small, had obtained for her the reputation of something like sorcery.

She spent each summer with her daughter and a few friends, in this pleasant villa, in the Tyrol, which she had purchased for the sake of having ready access to a variety of plants and herbs peculiar to the Alps. The winter she passed at Padua, engaged in her public duties. Her house there was closed against all male visitors, her lecture-room excepted, which of course was open to the disciples of Hippocrates. In the country, however, every agreeable and well-conducted guest was welcome.