APOPLEXY--THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH--THE NOTARY-PUBLIC-- THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT--THE KNIGHT"S MOVE--REVEL, THE MORNING PREACHER--THE SECOND APOPLECTIC ATTACK.
In the evening Henry drew up the curtain upon this tragedy (full of comic gravedigger business), and discovered Firmian lying on his bed speechless, with apoplectic head, and all his right side paralysed. The only mode in which the patient could bring himself to endure the torture of the deception, and of the pain he was causing Lenette, was by making a mental vow to send her the half of his yearly income as inspector at Vaduz, anonymously, and by remembering that by his death she would obtain happiness, freedom, and her lover. The occupants of the house formed a circle about the apoplectic patient, but Leibgeber drove them out of the room, saying, "the sufferer must have quietness and rest." It delighted him beyond expression to be able to go on uttering humourous lies without cessation. He a.s.sumed the office of Imperial Hereditary Doorkeeper, and shut the door in the doctor"s face (whom people insisted upon prescribing). "I am going to prescribe a little prescription for the patient myself," he said, "but, little as it is, it will restore his speech for a time. These cursed death-rivers, doctors" potions, Mr. Schulrath," (for that gentleman had been fetched immediately) "are like those rivers which demand a dead body every year." So he wrote a recipe for a simple sedative powder, as follows, reading aloud as he wrote;--
Rx Conch: Citratae Sirup: j.
Nitri Crystallisatae gr. x.
D.S. "The Sedative Powder."
"But above all things," he added, in the most imperative tones, "we must place the patient"s feet in warm water."
However, everybody in the house knew well enough that nothing would be of the slightest avail, as his death had been but too unmistakably foretold by the floury face; and Fecht felt a kind of sympathising satisfaction that he had hit the mark.
Scarcely had the sick man swallowed the powder, than, to the astonishment of the Death-a.s.surance a.s.sociation in his bedroom, he found himself able to speak, intelligibly, if not very loud. The domestic Vehmgericht was _not_, perhaps, altogether pleased with this.
But our good Henry had a pretext now for resuming his cheerful mien. He comforted Lenette by reminding her that "here below pain was but an initiation ceremony to something higher--the box-on-the-ear, or sword-accolade whereby a man is dubbed a knight."
The patient had a very fair night after his sedative powder, and began to have some slight hopes of himself. Henry would not allow Lenette (whose eyes were heavy with tears and sleep) to sit up by his bed during the night. He said he would prefer to be at hand himself, in case there should be any danger; of which, however, there was no great risk, as they made their agreement together (doing so in Latin, like princes) that Death, the fifth act of this tragic interlude, (only one of the _scenes_ of the tragedy of Life,) should take place on the evening of the following day. "Even till to-morrow," said Firmian, "is too long to wait. I am so unspeakably grieved for my poor Lenette"s sorrow. Like David, alas! I have to make a melancholy choice between famine, war, and pestilence, and have no way out of it but his. You, dear brother, are my Cain, and send me on my journey, and believe in the world to which you despatch me not a bit more than he did.[86]
Before you prescribed the sedative power which obliged me to talk, I was really wishing, in my silent gloom, that the jest might become earnest. For I _must_ one day pa.s.s through that underground portal which opens into the fortress of futurity, in which we shall be safe.
Ah! it is not the _dying_ that is painful, it is the _parting_--I mean from those we love." Henry said, in reply, "Nature holds a broad Achilles-shield before us to protect us from that final bayonet-thrust of life. On our death-beds we grow cold morally before we do so physically, a strange courtier-like indifference towards all we are leaving creeps frostily through the dying nerves. Sapient spectators say, "See, n.o.body but a Christian can die with such resignation and trust." Never mind, dear Firmian; the two or three painful burning minutes which you have to bear till to-morrow arrives are a capital warm bath of Aix water for the sick spirit. It has an infernal smell of rotten eggs _now_, no doubt, but that will go away completely as the bath grows cool."
Next day Henry eulogised him as follows. "As Cato the younger slept quietly the night before his death, (history heard him snore,) so you appear to have afforded these debilitated, unnerved, and degenerate days a fresh example of a similar magnanimity. If I were your Plutarch I should record the circ.u.mstance."
"In sober seriousness, though," answered Firmian, "I should be rather pleased if, several years hence, when Death has presented his _second_ of exchange, some literary West, the historical painter, should honour this odd _first_ death of mine by describing it for the press." This, we see a biographical West has now actually done, but I beg to be permitted to confess, without hesitation, that it has afforded me sincere gratification to find among the doc.u.ments this death-bed speech and wish, which I am so completely carrying out. Leibgeber answered, "The Jesuits in Lowen once published a little book in which the terrible end of Luther was minutely described in Latin. Old Luther got hold of the book and translated it, as he did the Bible, merely adding at the end, "I, Dr. M. Luther, have read and translated this narrative myself." If I were you, when I translated my death into English, I should write that at the end of it too." Do please write it, dear Siebenkaes, as you are still in life--but translate me, at all events.
Morning brings refreshing to the laid corn of humanity, whether it be laid upon the hard bed of sickness, or on the softer mattress of ordinary health; its breezes lift the bowed heads of both flowers and men: but _our_ sick man remained prostrate. Things seemed distinctly worse with him--he could not disguise from himself that he was losing ground; at all events he resolved to "set his house in order." This first quarter of the hour of death which the death bell tolled, smote like a sharp and heavy bell-hammer upon Lenette"s heart, whence the warm stream of the old love burst forth in bitter tears. Firmian could not bear the sight of this disconsolate weeping; he stretched his arms beseechingly, and the suffering creature laid herself between them in gentle obedience, on to his breast, their tears, their sighs, and their hearts mingled in the warmest affection, and thus they rested in happiness (though only upon wounds) at this brief distance from the boundary-hill of parting.
For this poor soul"s sake, then, he grew visibly better. Another improvement in his condition was necessary, moreover, to account for the happy frame of mind in which he executed his last will and testament. Leibgeber expressed satisfaction that the patient was able to take some dinner on the table-cloth of the bed-quilt, and swallow the contents of a sick man"s soup-dish about the size of a pond. "The good spirits," said Leibgeber to Peltzstiefel, "which our invalid is beginning to exhibit again, give me very considerable hopes indeed; though it was evidently only to please his wife that he took the soup."
n.o.body was fonder of lying, or lied oftener, _out of satire_ or humour, than Leibgeber and no one more utterly detested serious untruthfulness than he. He could tell a thousand lies in fun, but not two in a case of serious necessity. For the former he had at his finger"s end every possible deceptive trick of face and language; for the latter not one.
In the forenoon the Schulrath and Merbitzer, the landlord, were summoned to the bedside. "Gentlemen," began the sick man, "I am thinking of having my last will this afternoon--of declaring, at Nature"s place of execution, the three things which I desire--as the condemned in Athens were allowed to do; but what I wish to do at the present moment is to open one of my testaments before I make my second, or (to speak more accurately) the codicil of my first. I wish my friend Leibgeber to pack up, and keep possession of, all my scribblings as soon as I myself am stuck into my last addressed envelope. Further (and in this I follow the precedent of the Danish Kings, the old Dukes of Austria, and the n.o.ble Spaniards--of whom the first were interred in their armour, the second in lion"s skins, the third in miserable Capuchins" gowns)--I will and ordain that there shall be no hesitation about planting me in the bed of the next world in the very self-same old pod and sh.e.l.l in which I have vegetated in _this_; in brief, exactly as I am while now testating. This injunction necessitates my making my third that the woman who comes to lay me out shall be paid, and at once sent about her business, because all my life through I have had a most special antipathy to two women--the woman who washes us _into_ life, and the woman who washes us _out_ of it (though in a bigger bath-tub)--the midwife and the woman who lays out the corpse.
She is not to lay a finger upon me, nor is anybody except my Henry there." His hatred of these servants of life and death may probably have proceeded from the same causes as my own, namely the imperious and rapacious nature of the controlling power which these she-planters and caterers for the cradle and the bier exercise in squeezing us just in the two unarmed and weaponless hours of our deepest gladness and our deepest sorrow.
"I further will that as soon as my face has made the signal of adieu, Henry shall roof it over and shield it for ever with our long-necked mask, which I brought down from the box upstairs. I also desire that, when I take my departure from all the fields and plains of my youthful days, and hear nothing behind me but the rustle of the hayc.o.c.ks of the aftermath, I may, at all events, have my wife"s silken garland laid upon my breast, by way of game-counter to mark the joys I have lost. A man can"t go more suitably than with mock insignia, such as that, out of a life which has dished him up such a number of pasteboard pasties full of nothing but wind. Lastly, I will that, when I am gone on my journey, n.o.body shall clang after me from the church-steeple (like the people of Carlsbad), for we sick and transient watering-place visitors of life (like those of Carlsbad) are received and sent on our way with music from the steeples, especially as the Church"s servants are more expensive than the Carlsbad steeple-man, who only asks three pieces for blowing people in and out."
At this point he asked that Lenette"s profile-portrait might be given him in bed, and he said, in a faltering voice, "I should like my dear Henry and the landlord to leave the room for a minute, and let me be alone with the Schulrath and my wife."
When this was done he gazed fondly, a long while, in silence, upon the little likeness. His eyes ran over with sorrow like a broken river-bank. He gave the picture to the Schulrath, paused, overcome by emotion, and said at length: "To you, my faithful friend, and to you alone, can I give this beloved portrait: you are _her_ friend, as well as mine. Oh G.o.d! there is not a soul in the great, wide world that will take care of my dear Lenette if _you_ forsake her. Don"t cry so bitterly, my darling; he will be everything to you. Ah! dearest of friends, this helpless, innocent heart will break in desolate loneliness of sorrow unless _you_ protect it and console it. Oh! never abandon it, as I am doing!"
The Schulrath swore by the Almighty that he would never leave her, and he took her hand and pressed it (without looking at her) as she wept, and hung, with eyes raining down with tears, upon the face of his friend, whose voice was so soon to be mute for ever. But Lenette forced him away from her husband"s breast, and liberated her hand, and sunk down upon the lips which had so deeply touched her heart. Firmian clasped her with his left arm, and stretched his right hand to his friend--thus holding to his oppressed bosom the two things on earth that are nearest heaven, friendship and love.
And it is even this very matter which is an endless source of comfort and delight to me in you deluded and disagreeing mortals--that you all love one another heartily and utterly when you only get a chance of _seeing_ one another divested of coverings and fogs--that when we fear we are growing _blind_ we are only growing _cold_--and that, as soon as ever Death has raised our brothers and sisters up clear of the clouds of our own errors, our hearts melt into bliss and love when we see them soaring as beautiful human creatures, no longer distorted by the mists and concave mirrors of this world, up in the translucent aether; and cannot but sigh forth, "Ah! I should _never_ have misunderstood you if I had always seen you _thus_." This is why every loving soul stretches its arms out to those whom poets exhibit to our low-placed eyes, as geniuses, in their cloud-built heaven, though, could he let them sink down upon our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, they would lose their beauteous transfiguration in a few short days upon the dirty earth of our necessities and mistakes: as the crystal glacier-water which refreshes, without chilling, must be caught in the air as it drips from its ice-diamond, because it is made impure by the air the moment it touches the earth.[87]
The Schulrath went out, but only to the doctor. This distinguished Generalissimo of Friend Death (who did not bear the t.i.tle of "Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health" for nothing, but for money) was very willing to come and see the patient: firstly, because the Schulrath was a man of means and consideration; and, secondly, because Siebenkaes in his capacity of a member of the Corpse Lottery (of which the doctor also was a corresponding member and _frere servant_), ought not to be allowed to die. For this burial-fund was, in one of its more important aspects, a species of Government Savings" Bank, or Imperial Treasury for members of the better cla.s.ses. The sight of this Supreme Councillor of Health, advancing in battle-array, terrified Leibgeber to death. He could not but fear that the advent of the doctor might make matters take a more serious turn, so that Siebenkaes might transmit to posterity a celebrity like that of Moliere, who died on the stage while performing the part of the "Malade Imaginaire." The relation between doctor and patient seemed to him as indeterminate as that between woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, or bark-beetles, and trees; inasmuch as it is still a moot question whether the trees wither in consequence of these creatures boring into them, and laying their eggs in them, or if (on the contrary) it is because the bark is worm-eaten and the trunk dead, that the beetles come flying to the trees. My opinion as regards beetles and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs (and doctors as well) is that each is alternately cause and effect; and that there is no such thing as a living creature whose existence can possibly be taken as pre-supposing decay, because, if so, at the creation of the world there would have had to be a dead horse created for the bluebottles, and a rotten cheese for the mites.
Well, Dr. [Oe]lhafen (of the Supreme Board of Health) marched straight up to the sick man (shooting past the one who was not sick, with angry rudeness), and instantly swooped upon life"s seconds"-hand, the medical divining-rod, the pulse. Leibgeber set the plough of satirical anger into the soil of his face, ploughed crooked furrows, and determined upon a course of deep subsoil-ploughing.
"This," said the professor of the healing art, "is a case of genuine nervous apoplexy, supervening on an undue determination of blood to the head, and a plethora of the vessels. There ought to have been medical attendance at a much earlier stage of the case; the full, hard pulse threatens a repet.i.tion of the attack. An emetic powder, which I shall prescribe, will, in the circ.u.mstances, produce the best possible effect." And with this he pulled out some emetic _billets-doux_, wrapped up like _bonbons_. This preparation was one which he kept for sale himself, hawking it about from house to house like a Jew pedlar.
There were few diseases to which he did not apply these emetics of his by way of "means of grace," screwjacks, pump handles, and purgatorial fire; but he worked them most a.s.siduously of all in apoplexy chest-inflammation, headache, and bilious fever. What he said was that he "began by clearing the princ.i.p.al pa.s.sages," and in so doing he occasionally cleared the proprietor of said princ.i.p.al pa.s.sages out of this world, so that he found himself pa.s.sing through the final "pa.s.sage" of all flesh.
Leibgeber kneaded his odd visage into a new form, and said, "There seems nothing, Doctor [Oe]lhafen (my colleague and _protomedicus_), to prevent our holding our _concilium_, or _consilium_, or _collegium medic.u.m_, here where we stand. I cannot but think that my sedative powder had a good effect, seeing that it restored _apoplectico_ there the power of speech, yesterday." The _protomedicus_ took Leibgeber for some quack, and without so much as letting his eyes touch his colleague, said to Peltzstiefel, "Will you get them to bring some warm water, and I will give him the powder myself." "He and I will take it both together," burst in Leibgeber, in anger; "_both_ our gall-bladders are acting at present; the _patient_ shan"t, won"t, and mustn"t."
"Are you a regular pract.i.tioner, Sir?" asked the Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health, with contempt.
"I am a Jubilee Doctor, or Doctor Jubilant, and have been so ever since I ceased being a fool. You no doubt remember in Haller the case of the fool who thought his head was off, until they cured him by putting a lead hat on to him. A head roofed and insulated with lead has about as distinct a sense of individuality as one cast in that metal. I was very nearly in the same boat with that fool myself, brother colleague. I had inflammation of the brain, and did not find out so soon as I should have done that it had been put out, and cured. To make a long tale short, I fancied that my head had peeled away (or shall I call it "exfoliated," or "desquamated"), just as one"s feet moulder and drop off, like crab"s claws, when one takes too much ergot. When the barber came in, and threw down his purple tool-bag, or quiver, I said, "My dear Surgeon-General Sp[oe]rl, it may be perfectly true that flies, tortoises, and adders have been known to go on living after their heads were off, as I do, but there wasn"t much on them to shave. A man of your sense must see that it is as impossible to shave _me_ as to shave the Torso at Rome--where were you thinking of _soaping_ me, Mr.
Sp[oe]rl? Scarce was he out of the door when in came the wig-maker.
"Another time, Mr. Peisser," said I, "unless you propose to curl the circ.u.mambient air around me, or the hair on my chest, you can put your combs back into your waistcoat pocket. Since twelve o"clock last night I have been carrying on existence without either frieze or cornice, and, like the tower of Babel, I have no cupola. But if you will go and see whether you can find my head in the next room there, and put a _queue_ and a _toupee_ on to that _caput mortuum_ of mine, I should have no objection to that, and I don"t mind wearing the head by a way of a _queue_-wig." By good luck in came the Rector Magnificus. He was a doctor, and saw what distress I was in, when I smote my hands together and cried, "Where are my four brain chambers and my _corpus callosum_, my _a.n.u.s cerebri_, and my uniform _centrum_ (which, according to Glaser, is the seat of the imagination)? How can a Rump Parliament wear spectacles, or use ear trumpets? The reasons are obvious. Is it come to this with the monaecius head of the world, that it has _no_ head left for a seed-vessel?" But the Rector Magnificus sent to the University wardrobe for an old, tight-fitting, doctor"s hat; he put it on me with a gentle push, and said, "The faculty never places a doctor"s hat on anything but a head; it could not possibly put it on to a nothing." And this hat made a new head grow on to my imagination, like a decapitated snail"s. And ever since I was cured myself. I have taken to curing other people."
The Board of Health councillor turned a basilisk"s eyeball away from Leibgeber, and lowered himself downstairs by the ribbon of his cane like a bale of merchandize, omitting to pocket his emetic permit for the world to come, which the patient had, consequently, to pay for.
But our good Henry had another war to wage with Stiefel and Lenette, until Firmian threw himself between them as mediator, with the a.s.surance that he would have sent the powder packing in any case, because it would have been anything but good for an old pain in his heart (alas! he spoke figuratively), and two or three Gordian knots in his lungs (the "knots of the plot of his earthly drama").
But all this time, however good a face he might put on matters, there was no concealing the fact that he was steadily growing worse. The _ricochet_ of the apoplectic shot was clearly imminent, and to be looked for at any moment. "It is time I made my will," he said. "I long ardently for the Notary Public." This functionary, as is well known, has the drawing up of all last wills and testaments, according to the laws of Kuhschnappel. At length he arrived, Baerstel by name, a shrivelled and dried-up snail of a man, with a round, shy, listening b.u.t.ton-face, all hunger, anxiety, and attention. Many people thought his flesh was merely smeared over his bones, like the new Swedish _carton pierre_. "What is it your pleasure to have written to-day, Sir?" began Baerstel. "One of my pretty little codicils," said Siebenkaes. "But before we begin hadn"t you better try me with a catch-question or two, as is usually done with testators, to find out (without letting me know what you are at, you understand) whether I am all right in my head?" "Do you know who _I_ am, Sir?" said Baerstel.
"You are Mr. Baerstel, Notary Public," answered the patient. "Not only is that quite correct," answered Baerstel, "but it renders it quite clear that you are wandering very little, if at all, and we may proceed at once to draw up your testament."
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF SIEBENKaeS, POOR"S ADVOCATE.
"The undersigned, now yellowing and falling from the tree with the rest of the August apples, desires, being thus nigh to death, which looses the spirit from the thraldom of the body, to execute a few more merry back-steps, sidesteps, and Sir-Roger-de Coverleys, three minutes before the Basle dance of Death begins."
The notary paused, and asked in amazement, "Am I to put this stuff, and more like it, down upon paper?"
"_Imprimis_, I, Firmian Siebenkaes, alias Heinrich Leibgeber, do hereby will and ordain that my guardian the Heimlicher von Blaise shall (and must) pay over, within a year and day after my decease, to my friend, Mr. Leibgeber, inspector in Vaduz,[88] the 12,000 florins of trust money whereof he has G.o.dlessly defrauded me, his ward: the said Mr.
Leibgeber making over the same hereafter faithfully to my beloved wife.
In the event of the said Herr von Blaise declining so to do, I here lift up my hand and swear, upon my dying bed, that after I have departed this life I will pursue him, not legally, but spiritually, and will terrify him by appearing to him, either as the devil or as a tall white man, or by my voice merely, according as my circ.u.mstances, after my decease, may permit."
The notary"s feathered arm hovered in air, and he ceased not to shrink and shudder with terror. "All I am afraid of," he said, "is that if I write down things of this kind, the Heimlicher will get hold of me."
But Leibgeber, with face and body, barred his retreat through that h.e.l.l-gate, the door of the room.
"Further, as reigning sovereign of the shooter"s company, I will and ordain that no war of succession shall convert my testament into a powder of succession for innocent people. Further, that the republic of Kuhschnappel (into the office of Gonfaloniere and Doge whereof I was balloted with rifle bullets) shall wage no defensive war, seeing that it cannot defend itself if it does--but offensive wars only, with the object of enlarging the boundaries of its territories, they not being easy to protect. And that its members may, in their generation, be as wood-economising as their country and royal burgh"s father has been in his. Now-a-days, when forests are burned to charcoal faster than they grow again, the only thing to be done is to warm _the climate_ a good deal, and turn it into a great brooding-oven, kiln, and field-oven, so as to save the trouble, and obviate the necessity, of having stoves in the houses. And this has been in some measure attended to by careful Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who have cleared away the forests as much as they could, they being full of late winter. When one thinks how very beautifully modern Germany contrasts with that which Tacitus mapped, warmed as it is by the mere cutting down of the forests, we have little difficulty in feeling convinced that a time will come when, there being no more timber at all, we shall arrive at such a temperature that the atmosphere itself shall be our fur pelisse. The reason the present superfluity is burnt to ashes as rapidly as possible is, that the price of raft-wood may be raised, just as a million _livres_" worth of nutmegs were publicly burnt at Amsterdam in 1760, to prevent the price from falling.
"Moreover, as King of the Kuhschnappelian Jerusalem, it is my desire that the senate and people thereof (senatus, populusque Kuhschnappeliensis) be not d.a.m.ned, but contrariwise blessed, particularly in this present world. Further, that the town magnates may not devour the Kuhschnappelian nests (houses) as they do the Indian ones, and that the taxes, though they have to pa.s.s through the four stomachs of the tax-gatherers,[89] may nevertheless issue thence converted from milky chyle into red blood (from silver into gold), and after circulating through the lacteals and the thoracic duct, be impelled in due course into the veins of the body politic. Further, I will and appoint that the greater and the lesser council----"
The notary would fain have stopped here, and shook his head most energetically, but Leibgeber was playing with the rifle with which the testator had elevated himself to the throne of the marksman (whereas it is upon leaping-poles consisting of _other men"s_ ramrods that thrones are usually attained to), and Baerstel wrote on in the sweat of his brow.
"That the mayor, the treasurer, the Heimlicher, the eight members of council, and the serjeant of court, may listen to reason, and reward no merit but that of other people. And that the rascal Blaise, and the scoundrel Meyern may daily lay castigatory hands upon each other, as relations, so that there may at all events always be one to punish the other."
Here the notary jumped up, declared it took his breath away, and went to the window to get a little air. And as he saw that there was a pile of tanner"s bark within easy shot of the window-sill, his terror, shoving at him from behind, impelled him up on to the sill in question.
Having taken this _first_ step, before a testament witness could seize him by the coat-tails, he made a _second_ (and long) one out into the open air, so as to be in a position to reach that modelling-table the heap of bark. Being thus a falling artist (not a rising one), he could do no better on his arrival there than make use of his face as a graving-tool, plastic "form," and copying machine, and execute therewith a faint bas-relief impression of himself upon the heap of tan. His fingers worked busily as graving-tools, making copies of themselves, whilst, as a matter of pure accident, he countersigned this, his report of the incident, with his notarial seal, which he had taken with him in his descent. So easy is it for one notary to create another, like a Count Palatine. But Baerstel left his co-notary and the entire _lusus naturae_ behind him, thinking on his homeward way of matters of a wholly different kind. Stiefel and Leibgeber, again, looked out of window, and (the notary having vanished, bag and baggage,) gazed upon his _second_ outward man as it lay outstretched before them upon its anatomical theatre, smelling of Russia leather.
Concerning which the author will not add another word of his own, but only these of Henry"s.
"The notary wished to seal the testament with a larger seal than usual--one which n.o.body might forge--so he sealed it with his own body, and there we see the sphragistic impression all complete."
The will, such as it was, was duly subscribed by the witnesses and by the testator, and anything but a demi-military testament of this kind was scarcely to be expected in the circ.u.mstances. Evening was now drawing on,--the time when sick and sorry man turns him from the sun (as does the earth he dwells on), and _towards_ the twilight evening star of the other world,--when the _sick_ pa.s.s away to the latter, and the well gaze at the former--and when Firmian thought to give his wife the long kiss of parting, and then begin slowly sinking. But unfortunately Deacon Revel (the a.s.sistant preacher) came rustling in in an electrically stormy fashion. He came arrayed in his ecclesiastical armour, gorget, sash, and all, to administer a befitting rebuke to the invalid (round whose neck he had tied the band of matrimony in a double knot) for trying to evade payment of the confession fee--that toll for the communion of the sick and sound on the highway between heaven and h.e.l.l. As (on the authority of Linnaeus) the ancient botanists--a Croll, Porta, Helvetius, Fabricius--thought that certain plants which had more or less resemblance to particular illnesses were remedies for these complaints, prescribing yellow plants, such as saffron and turmeric, for jaundice, dragon"s-blood and catechu for dysentery, cabbage-heads for headache (as well as p.r.i.c.kly things, such as fish-bones, for st.i.tches in the side), so, in the hands of able Gospel ministers, the spiritual _materia medica_, such as sermons and admonitions, a.s.sume the appearance of the spiritual maladies for whose cure they are administered--anger, pride, avarice, and so on. Thus there is often no difference, but one of condition, between the bed-ridden patient and his physician. This was the case with Revel. One of his great objects in life was, in an age when people are so p.r.o.ne to defame the Lutheran clergy by calling them mere Jesuits in disguise, or monks, to give the most unmistakable proof, more by deeds than by words, that he was, at all events, none of _the latter_ (who call nothing their own, and are not allowed to possess property), and for that reason to be at all times on the hunt, and on the s.n.a.t.c.h, after worldly possessions. Hoseas Leibgeber did his best to make himself a barrier-rope and turnstile for the parson, and stopped him on the threshold, saying, "I fear it won"t be of much use; I tried my own hand yesterday at converting and recoining him flying, (if I may use the expression,) post-haste, _volti subito citissime_, but all that came of it was that he threw it in my teeth that I wasn"t converted _myself_--and no more I am. There are whole flocks of heretical singing-birds pecking away at the summer rape-seed of _my_ opinions." Revel answered (vacillating between a major mode and a minor), "A servant of the Lord bides his time, keeps diligent watch, and does the duty of his sacred calling, striving to save souls--from atheism, as well as from other sin. The _event_ concerns the sinner, and the sinner only."
So this black storm cloud, charged to the brim with Sinai-lightnings, rolled on into the dim-lit chamber; the parson waved his great, flapping gown-sleeve, like a standard of spiritual healing and rehabilitation, over the atheist (as _he_ thought him) stretched on his bed, and told him in a "sick-bed exhortation" (which is generally the very antipodes of a funeral sermon)--in a "sick-bed exhortation" (I say) such as may one day overtake me and my reader under our last bed-cover, and which I shall therefore avoid sending all the way from Bayreuth to Heidelberg to be put in type, since it may be heard _en route_ going on in any sick-chamber. At the same time he _told_ him, in the said sick-bed exhortation to his face, like a plain-speaking, straight-forward man, that he was a roast for the devil"s table, just done to a turn, and ready to be dished and served. The roast (thus p.r.o.nounced to be done to a turn), closed his eyes, and endured it.
But Henry, whom it pained to see the parson pinching the ears and the heart whom he loved with red-hot pincers, and who was furious at the thought that it was done solely to frighten the sick man into the Confessional--Henry seized his waving arm, and gently reminded him--