Dr. Gottlieb

“ His wife seemed better; his daughter Miriam found an excellent piano teacher; the boy Robert entered college that autumn; they had a spacious though decrepit house; the relief from the droning and the annually repeated, inevitable routine of the classroom was exhilarating; and Gottlieb had never in his life worked so well. He was unconscious of everything outside of his laboratory and a few theaters and concert-halls. ”

“ However harshly he may have pointed out Martin's errors, however loftily he may have seemed to ignore his devotion, Gottlieb was as aware of Martin as Martin of him. He planned vast things. If Martin really desired his help (Gottlieb could be as modest personally as he was egotistic and swaggering in competitive science) , he would make the boy's career his own. During Martin's minute original research, Gottlieb rejoiced in his willingness to abandon conventional—and convenient—theories of immunology and in the exasperated carefulness with which he checked results. ”

“ Like all discussions of Judaism at Winnemac, this led to the mention of Max Gottlieb, professor of bacteriology in the medical school.
Professor Gottlieb was the mystery of the university. It was known that he was a Jew, born and educated in Germany, and that his work on immunology had given him fame in the East and in Europe. He rarely left his small brown weedy house except to return to his laboratory, and few students outside of his classes had ever identified him, but every one had heard of his tall, lean, dark aloofness. ”

“ II A long letter from Leora, hinting that she might not be able to return to Zenith, left him the more lonely. Nothing seemed worth doing. In that listless state he was mooning about the laboratory during elementary bacteriology demonstration hour, when Gottlieb sent him to the basement to bring up six male rabbits for inoculation. Gottlieb was working eighteen hours a day on new experiments; he was jumpy and testy; he gave orders like insults. When Martin came dreamily back with six females instead of males, Gottlieb shrieked at him, "You are the worst fool that was ever in this lab!" ”

“ And Gottlieb!—he is at work all day, In the sunny field, or the forest murk, But I know that his thoughts are far away, I know that his heart is not in his work! And when he comes home to me at night He is not cheery, but sits and sighs, And I see the great tears in his eyes, And try to be cheerful for his sake. Only the children's hearts are light. Mine is weary, and ready to break. ”

“ Some day I'll discover the germ of cancer or something, and then he'll look foolish in the face!...Oh, Lord, I hope I won't take sick, first time I go into the dissecting-room...I want to take bacteriology—now!"
He recalled Gottlieb's sardonic face; he felt and feared his quality of dynamic hatred. Then he remembered the wrinkles, and he saw Max Gottlieb not as a genius but as a man who had headaches, who became agonizingly tired, who could be loved.
"I wonder if Encore Edwards knows as much as I thought he did? What is Truth?" he puzzled.
IV. Martin was jumpy on his first day of dissecting. ”

“ And when they had eaten their hasty Christmas feast, and the mother was smoothing his hair and making the best of his poor garments, Gottlieb said, looking up gravely in her face:
"Who knows, mother, if Hans is only a raven now, that the good God may not make him, his very self, the angel?"
"Perhaps God is making Hans into the angel even now," replied the mother. ”

“ While medical quacks, manufacturers of patent medicines, chewing-gum salesmen, and high priests of advertising lived in large houses, attended by servants, and took their sacred persons abroad in limousines, Max Gottlieb dwelt in a cramped cottage whose paint was peeling, and rode to his laboratory on an ancient and squeaky bicycle. Gottlieb himself protested rarely. He was not so unreasonable—usually—as to demand both freedom and the fruits of popular slavery. "Why," he once said to Martin, "should the world pay me for doing what I want and what they do not want?" ”

“ Gottlieb was very shrewd at devising schemes that came just within the law and used to amuse himself by so doing in his leisure moments. One of the best—the idea which he sold for three hundred dollars and which is still being used in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere—is the following:
An old man, with a square of plate glass in a newspaper and a bundle of glass-cutter's tools by his side is seen sitting dejectedly on a curb with his head in his hands. He has no coat and the icy wind blows through his straggling locks of gray hair—a pathetic picture. ”

“ A second time were his honey-pots sacrificed, that the coming into the world of the little Minna might be made smooth. This, also, was a willing sacrifice; though in his heart of hearts Gottlieb felt a twinge of regret that his first-born was not a son, to whom the fame and fortune incident to the making of perfect lebkuchen might descend. But he was a philosopher in his way, and did not suffer himself to be seriously disconcerted by an accident that by no means was irreparable. As he smoked his long pipe that night, while the bread was baking, he said to himself, cheerily: "It is a girl. ”

“ He concentrated on Leora, but his talk was of Martin:
"Your husband must be an Artist Healer, not a picker of trifles like these laboratory men."
"But Gottlieb's no picker of trifles," insisted Martin.
"No-o. But with him— It's a difference of one's gods. Gottlieb's gods are the cynics, the destroyers—crapehangers, the vulgar call 'em: Diderot and Voltaire and Elser; great men, wonder-workers, yet men that had more fun destroying other people's theories than creating their own. ”

“ Once he rushed into Gottlieb’s laboratory with the announcement of the antitoxin, whereupon with affection and several discomforting questions and the present of a box of real Egyptian cigarettes, Gottlieb showed him that he had not considered certain dilutions.
With all his amateurish fumbling, Martin had one characteristic without which there can be no science: a wide-ranging, sniffing, snuffling, undignified, unselfdramatizing curiosity, and it drove him on. ”

“ So, between the chorus of praise and the other chorus of mockery, it was no wonder that poor Gottlieb felt like a being far removed from the common herd. And, necessarily, any one of the flock of Christ who feels that, cannot be happy, because if we are far away from the common flock, we cannot be near the Good Shepherd, who always keeps close to the feeblest, and seeks those that go astray. ”

“ Possibly one reason why Gottlieb's storm was so violent was that he could not give any good reason for it. Hans really was a most estimable young man; he came of a good family; as a baker he was nothing short of a genius. All this Gottlieb knew, and all this he frequently had said to Aunt Hedwig and to Herr Sohnstein, and, worst of all, to Minna. ”

“ She learned all the book-lore that the good pastor chose to impart to the little maidens of the hamlet, and no hand was more skillful than hers with the knitting-needle and distaff. Thus she grew up, delicate and fair, with eyes as blue as summer skies, and long golden locks, hanging almost to her feet, for she was as tiny as a fairy in stature.
There came sometimes to the cottage of Father Gottlieb, a dark-browed man, whose towering form and heavily-built limbs gave him the semblance of some giant of the hills. ”

“ After that, Gottlieb had no more trouble about the master. The old man's severity became comprehensible and dear to him, and a loving liberty and confidence came into his bearing toward him, which went to the heart of the childless old man, so that dearer than the praise of the archduchess, or even the discomfiture of the Cistercians, became to him the success and welfare of the child. ”

“ They sent him, with anxiety over the cost, to a smart school near Zenith, where he met the sons of manufacturers and discovered a taste for fast motors and eccentric clothes, and no taste whatever for studying. At home he clamored that his father was a "tightwad." When Gottlieb sought to make it clear that he was a poor man, the boy answered that out of his poverty he was always sneakingly spending money on his researches—he had no right to do that and shame his son—let the confounded University provide him with material! ”

“ Miriam came, and in a stiff, embarrassed manner Gottlieb presented her to his father. The girl looked in surprise at the venerable figure that stood before her—a picture of a patriarch from the Pentateuch, with a long, straggling beard, and ringlets of hair falling over the ears, and clad in the long gaberdine of the Russian Ghettos. And she saw a pair of grey eyes bent keenly upon her—eyes of shrewdness, but soft and tender as a woman’s—the eyes of a strong man with a kind heart. ”

“ When he heard the voice, Gottlieb roused himself, and read; and it was written, “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; the spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Then, for a little while, Gottlieb was warned, and he walked like one awake; but, after a time, such power had this sleepy air, he was again almost as drowsy as ever, and his eyes were nearly closed. Then, before Gehulfè could give him a second warning, he placed his foot in a hole, which he would have easily passed by, if he had been watching ”

“ For Gottlieb is a shabby, shambling old man, the chief expert in the world on his own subjects, with an unwavering contempt for charlatanry, for fame, for stamped work, an unwavering devotion to accuracy and thoroughness in scientific investigation. He publishes a paper once every five years that half-a-dozen men in the world can understand ”

“ Of course the devil did not plant the notion of theft in Gottlieb's mind in this bald fashion; for the devil is a most considerate person, and ever shows a courteous disposition to spare the feelings of those whom he would lead into sin. No: the temptation that he suggested was the subtle and ingenious one that Gottlieb should proceed to recover his own stolen property! His logic was admirable: Hans had been Gottlieb's assistant; and as such Gottlieb had owned him and his recipe as well. When Hans went away and took the recipe with him, he took that which still belonged to his master. ”

“ Gottlieb was patient. "It iss a fine system, this education. All what we cram into the students, not Koch and two dieners could learn. Do not worry about the research. We shall do it yet." But he expected Martin to perform a miracle or two in the whole fortnight of the holidays and Martin had no stomach with which to think. He played in the laboratory; he spent his time polishing glassware, and when he transplanted cultures from his rabbits, his notes were incomplete.
Gottlieb was instantly grim. "Was gibt es dann? Do you call these notes? Always when I praise a man must he stop working? ”

“ Martin has not yet reached such a stability of will that he can join Gottlieb in his single-hearted devotion; but through all his vacillations he keeps in the end Gottlieb's ideal for his own.
He has the good fortune, quite unmerited, to marry an enchanting girl, matter-of-fact, tender and passionate, who loves him with her whole nature and yet, as much for his sake as for hers, never allows her personality to be swamped by his. She is content always with his actions, because she retains so deep a faith in his final integrity ”

“ He had seen not the streets, but microorganisms large as jungle monsters, miles of flasks cloudy with bacteria, himself giving orders to his garcon, Max Gottlieb awesomely congratulating him. Always his dreams had clung about his work. Now, no less passionately, he awoke to the ship, the mysterious sea, the presence of Leora, and he cried to her, in the warm tropic winter dusk:
"Sweet, this is only the first of our big hikes! Pretty soon, if I'm successful in St. Hubert, I'll begin to count in science, and we'll go abroad, to your France and England and Italy and everywhere!" ”

“ Gottlieb made bad jokes, and laughed about the devil, and the other old fellow groaned and sighed, and talked of the devil, as if he sat at table with us every day, and eat his potatoes, like other honest people. Now, my little girls were quite perplexed; Mining attached herself to Gottlieb, and Lining to Rudolph, for now it was Rudolph who said Gottlieb did not occupy a Christian standpoint."
"Fie!" said Bräsig, "he should not have said that. And such a fellow as that cannot catch a good-sized perch!" ”

“ When he was quite sure that Nature was persisting in doing something she ought not to, he went guiltily to Gottlieb, protesting, "The darn' bugs ought to die in this immune serum, but they don't. There's something wrong with the theories."
"Young man, do you set yourself up against science?" grated Gottlieb, flapping the papers on his desk. "Do you feel competent, huh, to attack the dogmas of immunology?" ”

“ The other choristers understood very well what this meant, and some of them were not a little jealous of the new favorite, as they called him. But to little Gottlieb it seemed hard and strange. He was always straining to do his very best, and yet he never seemed to satisfy. The better he did, the better the master wanted him to do, until he grew almost hopeless. ”

“ Too long. Better just call it phage. Even got to take his name for it, for my own X Principle! Well, I had a lot of fun, working all those nights. Working—"
He was coming out of his trance. He imagined the flask filled with staph-clouded broth. He plodded into Gottlieb's office to secure the journal containing D'Herelle's report, and read it minutely, enthusiastically.
"There's a man, there's a scientist!" ”