"I did not think it would have been very polite, Mr. Kevel, to mention it before--but the patient"s hearing is a good deal impaired. You will find you will be obliged to scream. He has not heard a syllable you have said up to this point. Mr. Siebenkaes, do you know who this is? You see how little he hears. Set to work now at converting _me_, over a gla.s.s of beer--I should prefer that very much, and _I_ hear a great deal better. I"m very much afraid he has a touch of delirium, and, if he sees you at all, thinks you are the devil--for it is with _him_ that the dying have to fence their last bout. It"s a pity he didn"t know what you were saying. He would have been very angry and annoyed--(for confess he will _not_)--and on the authority of Haller, in the 8th volume of his "Physiology, a proper amount of annoyance and vexation has often been known to add weeks to a dying person"s life. But, after all, he _is_ a _kind_ of a true Christian, after a fashion, when all"s said, although he no more dreams of _confessing_ than any of the Apostles did, or the fathers either. When he is gone, you shall hear from my own lips how peacefully a true Christian pa.s.ses away--no convulsions--no contortions--no agonies of death. He is as completely at home in the world of spirits as the screech-owl is in the village steeple--and just as the owl sits in the belfry while the bells are ringing, I will be bound that our Advocate will never stir when the death-bell tolls for him--for he has acquired, from your sermons, the conviction that he will go on living after he dies."
In the above speech there was some pretty hard hitting, in the shape of jest, at Firmian"s mock death, as well as at his faith in immortality; such jests, in fact, as none but a Firmian could both understand and pardon. But Leibgeber was, at the same time, making an attack, in all seriousness, on those good people who believe accidental, physical tranquillity in dying to be tranquillity of soul, and bodily struggles to be storms of conscience.
Revel contented himself with replying, "You are of those who sit in the seat of the scorner--whom the Lord will find. I have washed my hands."
But as he would have infinitely preferred _filling_ them, and, moreover, could not succeed in transforming this child of the devil into a confessing penitent, he took his departure, red and silent, escorted downstairs by Lenette and Stiefel with many deferential curtseys and bows.
Let us not make out Henry"s gall-bladder (which is likewise his swimming-bladder, and, alas! often his ascending _globus hystericus_) to be any bigger than it really is. Let us form a judgment, all the more favourable, of this natural foible of his from considering than Henry had, in the course of his previous career, seen spiritual _freres terribles_, and gallows preachers of this sort, strewing salt upon the faint, withered hearts on so many deathbeds; and because it was his belief (as it is mine) that of all the hours of a man"s life his last must be the most indifferent as regards religion, inasmuch as it the most unfruitful, and no seed can sprout in it which will bear any fruit of action.
During the brief absence of the courteous couple, Firmian said, "Oh! I am sick, sick, and weary of it all. I _cannot_ carry on the joke any longer. In ten minutes more I intend to lie my last lie, and die--and would to G.o.d it were not a lie. Don"t let them bring in any lights, but cover me up at once with the mask, for I see very plainly that I shall not be able to control these eyes of mine, and when the mask is on, I shall, at all events, be able to let them weep as much as they like.
Ah! Henry, my good, kind friend!"
The infusory chaos of Revel"s exhortation had made this weary _figurant_ and mimicker of Death tender and grave. Henry--out of his delicate and loving solicitude--had undertaken all the lying parts of the _role_, and enacted those himself. He therefore (as the couple were coming back into the room), cried out, in a loud, anxious voice, "Firmian, how do you feel now?" "Better," said Firmian, in a voice of emotion. "There are stars shining in this world"s night, though I, alas! am clamped to the dust, and cannot soar up to them. The bank of the lovely spring-time of eternity is steep, and, close as we day-flies are swimming to the sh.o.r.e of Life"s Dead Sea, we have not got our wings yet." Yes! Death--sublime and glorious after sunset-sky of our St.
Thomas"s Day--grand amen of our hope, spoken to our ears from the other world--would come to our beds in the likeness of a beautiful giant, with a garland on his brow, and lift us gently up into the aether, and rock us there to rest, were it not that we go to him only as maimed, stunned creatures, who are _thrown_ into his giant arms. What robs Death of his glory is sickness; the pinions of the soul when it rises on its heavenward flight are heavy, and stained with blood, and tears, and mire. The only time when death is a flight--not a fall--is when some hero is smitten by one, single, mortal wound, when, as he stands like a spring-world, all new blossom, and old fruit, the next world suddenly flashes by him, like some comet, bearing him (miniature world as he is) all unwithered, along with it in its flight, to soar with it beyond the sun.
But this mental exaltation of Firmian"s would have been an indication of reviving strength and returning health to sharper eyes than Stiefel"s. It is upon the _looker-on_ only--not upon the victim who is smitten down--that the battle-axe of Death casts a flash of light. It is with the death-bell as with other bells; it is those who are _at a distance_ who hear the solemn, inspiring boom and music--not those who are _within_ the sounding hemisphere. And as every bosom grows more sincere and more transparent in the hour of death--like the Siberian gla.s.s-apple, the kernel of which, when ripe, is covered only by a crystal case formed of sweet, transparent flesh--so Firmian, in this dithyrambic hour--near as he was to the bare edge of Death"s sickle--could have gladly sacrificed (that is, discovered) all the mystery and blossom of his future, but that by so doing he would have broken his word and grieved his friend. But nothing was left him now, save a patient heart, dumb lips, and weeping eyes.
Alas! and were not all his ostensible farewells _real_ ones after all?
As he drew his Henry and the Schulrath to his heart with trembling hands, was that heart not oppressed by the mournful certainty of losing the Schulrath on the morrow, and Henry in a week"s time, for ever? So that the following address which he made to them was nothing but the plain truth, mournful though it was. "Alas! we shall be scattered asunder by the four winds of heaven in a very, very little time. Ah!
human arms are rotten bands. How short a time they hold! May all be well with you--and better than I ever deserved it might be with me. May the chaotic stone-heaps of your lives never come rolling down about your feet, or about your ears--may spring overspread the crags and cliffs around you with berries, and the freshest green! Good night for ever, dearly loved Schulrath, and you, my Henry!" He pressed the latter to his heart in silence, thinking how near the veritable parting was.
But he should have avoided stimulating his heart into feverish excitement by these p.r.i.c.ks and stings of farewell, for he heard Lenette mourning out of sight behind the bed, and (with a deep death-wound in his overflowing heart) said, "Come, my beloved Lenette, and bid me good-bye;" and stretched out his arms in a wild manner to receive her.
She came tottering, and sank into them, and on to his heart, while he was speechless under the crushing weight of his emotions; till at length, as she lay there trembling, he said, in a low voice, "Ah! poor, patient, faithful, tortured soul! how constantly and unceasingly have I caused you sorrow! Will you forgive me? Will you forget me?" (A spasm of sorrow clasped her closer to him.) "Ah! do _but_ forget me, and forget me _quite_; for heaven knows you have never been happy with me!"
Their voices were lost in sobs, only their tears could flow. A drawing, thirsting grief was grinding at his weary heart, and he went on: "No, no; with _me_ you have truly had nothing, nothing but tears; but there are happy days coming for you, when I shall be gone from you." He gave her his parting kiss, saying, "Live happy now, and let me be gone!"
"But you are _not_ going to die," she cried again and again, with a thousand tears. He put his arms about her, he gently raised her fainting form from his breast, and said, very solemnly, "It is over now. Fate has sundered us; it is over and past."
Henry gently led her weeping away; and he cried himself, too; and cursed his plot; and signed to the Schulrath, saying, "Firmian needs rest now." The latter turned his face, swollen and drawn with pain, to the wall. Lenette and Stiefel were mourning together in the other room.
Henry waited till the greater billows had subsided somewhat, and then quietly put the question: "Now?" Firmian gave the signal, and Henry yelled out, "Oh! he is gone!" like a man beside himself; and threw himself down upon the motionless body (to prevent anybody from touching it), with genuine, bitter tears at the thought of the nearness of parting. An inconsolable couple came bursting from the next room.
Lenette would have thrown herself upon her husband (whose face was turned away), and she cried, in agony, "I must see him; I must bid my husband good-bye once more." But Henry told the Schulrath (confidentially) to take hold of her, and support her, and get her away out of the room. The two former things he was able to accomplish (although his _own_ self-control was only an artificial one, a.s.sumed with the view of demonstrating the victory of religion over philosophy), but get her out of the room he could not. When she saw Henry take up the mask of death, "No, no," she cried; "I insist upon being allowed to see my husband once more." But Henry took the mask, gently turned Firmian"s face (on which the tears of parting were scarce yet dry), and covered it up, thus hiding it for ever from his wife"s weeping eyes. This grand scene lifted up his heart; he gazed upon the mask and said, "Death lays a mask like this over all our faces; and a time will come when _I_ shall stretch me out in death"s midnight sleep as _he_ has done, and grow longer and heavier. Ah! poor Firmian! has that war game of yours been worth the candles and the trouble? We are not the _players_, it is true; we are the things _played with_: and old Death sends our heads and hearts rolling like b.a.l.l.s over the green billiard-table, and pockets them in his corpse-sack; and every time one of us is pocketed there, the death-bell gives a toll. It is true you go on living in a sense[90] (if the frescoes of ideas can be detached from the walls of the body), and oh! may you be happier in that postscript life than in this. But what is it, this postscript life, after all?
_It_ will go out too; every life, on every world-ball, will burn out one day. The planets are licensed only to retail liquor to be drunk on the premises. They can"t board and lodge us; they merely pour us out a gla.s.s of quince-wine, currant-juice, spirits; but for the most part _gargles_ of _good_ wine (which we must not swallow), or else sympathetic ink (i. e. _liquor probatorius_), sleeping-draughts, and acids; and then, on we go, from one planet-inn to another; and so from millennium to millennium. Oh! thou kind heaven; and whither, whither, whither?
"However, this earth is the wretchedest village tap-room of the lot; a place where mostly beggars, rogues, and deserters turn in, and which we have always to go five steps _away_ from to _enjoy_ our best pleasures; that is to say, either into memory or into imagination.
"Ah! peaceful being there at rest, may it fare better with you in other taverns than here; and may some restaurateur of life open the door of a wine-cellar for you in _lieu_ of this vinegar-cellar!"
CHAPTER XXI.
DR. [OE]LHAFEN AND MEDICAL BOOT AND SHOEMAKING--THE BURIAL SOCIETY--A DEATH"S HEAD IN THE SADDLE--FREDERICK II. AND HIS FUNERAL ORATION.
As a step preliminary to everything else, Leibgeber quartered the sorrowing widow down stairs with the hairdresser, with the view of rendering the intermediate state after death easier to the dead man.
"You must emigrate," he told her, "and keep out of the sight of these sad memorials round us here, until _he_ has been taken away."
Superst.i.tious terror made her consent, so that he had no difficulty in giving the dear departed his food and drink. He compared him to a walled-up vestal, finding in her cell a lamp, bread, water, milk, and oil (according to Plutarch, in "Numa"); and added, "Unless you are more like the earwig, which, when cut in two, turns about and devours its own remains." By jokes like these he brightened (or, at all events, strove to brighten) the cloudy and autumnal soul of his dear friend, who could see nothing all around him save ruins of his bygone life, from the widowed Lenette"s clothes to her work. The bonnet-block, which he had struck on the day of the thunder-storm, had to be put away in a corner out of his sight, because he said it made Gorgon faces at him.
Next day, our good corpse-watcher, Leibgeber, had to perform the labours of a Hercules, an Ixion, and a Sisyphus combined. Congress after congress, picket after picket, came to see the dead man and speak well of him--for it is not until they make their _exit_ that we applaud men and actors, and we think people are _morally_ beautified by death as Lavater thought they were physically. But Leibgeber drove everybody away from the death-chamber, saying it had been one of his friend"s last requests that he should do so.
Then came the woman to lay out the corpse (Death"s Abigail), and wanted to begin washing and dressing it. Henry tussled with her, paid her, and banished her. Then (in presence of the widow and Peltzstiefel), he had to pretend to _be_ pretending to hide a bleeding heart behind outward resignation. "But I see through him," said Stiefel, "without the slightest trouble. It is because he is not a Christian that he is striving to play the Stoic and the Philosopher." Stiefel was here alluding to that specious, empty, and frivolous hardness which is exhibited by Zenos of the world and of the court, who are like those wooden figures which are made to look like stone statues and pillars by being smeared over with a coating of stone-dust. Also the share, or dividend, of the burial-fund was got together (by being collected on a plate from the members of that body), and this led to its coming to the knowledge of our old acquaintance Dr. [Oe]lhafen, who was one of the paying members. He took occasion, on his morning round of visits, to drop in at the house of mourning, with the view of provoking his brother in science to as great an extent as he could. He therefore affected not to have heard a word about the death, and began by asking how the invalid was getting on. "According to the _latest_ bulletins,"
said Henry, "he is not _getting_ on at all--he has _got_ on; in a word, Herr Protomedicus [Oe]lhafen, he is gone. August, March, and December are months when Death sends out his pressgang and gathers in his vintage."
"That lowering powder of yours," said the vindictive Doctor, "seems to have lowered _his_ temperature pretty effectively; he"s cool enough _now_, eh?" This pained Leibgeber, and he answered, "I am sorry to say, he is. However, we did our best with him. We got your emetic down his throat, but the only thing he got rid of was that most terribly morbific of all matters in man--his soul. You, Mr. Protomedicus, are judge in a criminal court, having the power of life and death; whereas, you see, I am only an advocate, and possessed of a jurisdiction so far inferior that _I_ didn"t dare meddle with anything, least of all the fellow"s _life_; a nice face he would have made if I had."
"Well, so he _has_ made a face at it, and a long face, too--the hippocratic face," answered the Doctor, not wholly without wit. "I can"t but believe you," answered Leibgeber, in a gentle manners "I have not the least doubt you are perfectly right. We laymen, you see, have so few opportunities of seeing those faces, whereas doctors can study the hippocratic countenance in their patients every day of their lives.
And, of course, an experienced doctor is always distinguished by a quickness of eye which enables him to tell at a glance if a patient be going to die--which is an impossibility to other people, who, not being doctors in practice, have not many opportunities of seeing people depart this life."
"A medical connoisseur of _your_ cultivation and experience as a matter of course put mustard poultices to the patient"s feet? Only, I presume, it was too late for them to be of any use, was it?"
"I _did_ manage to hit upon the notion of trying that trick of soling my poor friend"s feet with mustard and vinegar" (answered Leibgeber), "and paper-hanging the calves of his legs with blisters; but the patient (at all times rather fond of his joke, as you know), called that sort of thing "medical boot and shoemaking," and called us doctors "Death"s shoemakers," who, when Nature has cried to a poor fellow "Look out! Mind your head!" go and put Spanish flies on to him by way of Spanish boots, mustard-plasters by way of _Cothurni_, and cupping-gla.s.ses by way of leg-irons: as if a man could not make his appearance in the next world without red heels consisting of mustard-blister marks, and red cardinal stockings of plaster blisters.
And so saying, the deceased aimed a skilful kick at my face and the plaster, and said the connoisseurs were like stinging-flies, which always fasten upon the legs."
"He wasn"t far wrong, I suspect, as regarded _you_. A "shoemaker of Death" might perhaps put something on just under that _caput tribus insanabile_ of yours which wouldn"t fit so badly," said the Doctor, and made off as fast as he could.
I have already said a few words concerning those emetic powders of his, and I now wish to add what follows. If he _does_ send people to their long homes by means of them, the chief difference between him and a fox[91] is that (according to the ancient naturalist), the latter imitates the distant sound of a man being sick to make the dogs run to him, that he may attack them. At the same time even those whose opinion of the members of the medical profession is the highest conceivable must admit that there are certain limits to their criminal jurisdiction. As by European International Law, no army can shoot down another with gla.s.s bullets, or poisoned ones, but only with leaden ones--further, as no nation may put poison into the enemies" food, or wells, but only dirt--so, although the medical police allow a practising physician (of the higher jurisdiction) the utmost freedom in the administration of narcotics, drastics, emetics, diuretics, and the whole pharmacop[oe]ia, in a word (so that it would be a breach of the police regulations to attempt to prevent him), yet were the most celebrated of doctors, town or country, within the limits of his jurisdiction to set to work and give people poison-b.a.l.l.s in place of pills, or ratsbane by way of a strong emetic, the upper courts of justice would take a pretty serious view of the matter--unless it were for ague that he prescribed the mouse-poison. Nay, I suspect that an entire medical _collegium_ would scarce escape some judicial inquiry if it were to take a sword and run a man through with it (though it might open his veins with a lancet at any hour of the day or night if it pleased), or if it were to knock him down with a warlike but nonsurgical instrument. Thus we find in the criminal records that doctors who threw people into the water from bridges have by no means got clear off--that being a different affair altogether from putting them into a _smaller_ bath, mineral or otherwise.
When the hairdresser heard that the corpse-lottery money had safely arrived in its harbour of refuge, he came upstairs and offered to curl his deceased lodger"s hair, make him a pigtail, and let his comb and pomatum accompany him under the sod. Leibgeber was obliged to be economical on the poor widow"s account, for more than half her feathers were plucked out of her already by the innumerable insect-feelers, vultures"-talons, and boars"-tusks of the domestics of death, and he said the most he could do was to buy the comb and put it in the deceased"s waistcoat-pocket, so that he might do it himself after his own taste. He said the same to the barber, and added that, of course, as hair goes on growing in the grave, the whole secret society (and fruit-bearing society) therein is adorned with fine beards, like Swiss of the age of sixty. These two collaborateurs in hair (who revolve round the same central-sphere like two of the satellites of Ura.n.u.s) went off with abbreviated hopes, and elongated faces and purses, the one wishing, in the excess of his grat.i.tude, that he had at that moment the shaving of the undertaker Henry, the other wishing _he_ had the cutting of his hair. On the stairs they grumbled out, "It would be no wonder if the dead man should not be able to rest in his grave, but went about frightening people."
Leibgeber thought of the risk there was of losing the reward of all this long process of deception, should anybody go to have a look at the deceased gentleman while he was in the next room (for whenever he was going further he locked the door). So he went to the churchyard, took a skull out of the charnel-house, and brought it home under his coat. He handed it to Siebenkaes, saying, "If we were to shove this head in beneath the green trellis-bed whereon _defunctus_ is lying, and keep it connected with his hand by means of a green-silk thread, it might be brought into play (in the dark, at all events), as a species of Belidor"s globe of compression, or jawbone of an a.s.s as against Philistines, who have got to be frightened away if they come disturbing the repose of the warm dead." To be sure (had the most extreme necessity to do so arisen) Siebenkaes would have come to himself, revived out of his prolonged insensibility, and repeated his apoplectic seizure for the third time--much to the gratification of medical systems of theory. However, the death"s head was better than the fit.
The sight of this garret-lodging of a soul, this cold hatching-oven of a spirit, made Siebenkaes sad. He said, "No doubt the wall-creeper finds a quieter and safer nest here than did the bird-of-paradise,[92] which has flown away from it."
Leibgeber now chaffered with the servants of the Church and School, and (with whispered curses) paid the necessary surplice-fees and bridge-tolls, saying, "The day after tomorrow we will lay the deceased to rest as quietly as we may, without fuss or ceremony." It was a matter of indifference to them; all _they_ cared about being the pocketing of the postage which franks people into the next world, which they were all glad enough to do--all except one old and poor School-servant, who said he thought it a sin to take a farthing from the poor widow, for he knew what poverty was. But this was exactly what the rich could not know.
In the morning, Henry went down to the hairdresser and Lenette, leaving the key in the door--for, since the recent ghost story, the lodgers who lived upstairs were too frightened to put so much as their heads out of their own doors. The hairdresser, who was still annoyed that he had not been allowed to curl the deceased"s hair, bethought him that it would at least be something if he were to slip upstairs, and cut and carry off the entire hair-forest. The demand for hair and firewood is in excess of the supply (now that the former is made into rings and twisted into letters), and we should never leave any dead person a coffin or a single hair. Even the ancients sheared off the latter for the altars of the subterranean G.o.ds; so Meerbitzer crept on tiptoe into the room, and opened his scissor-feelers. Siebenkaes could easily look askew into the room through the eye-holes of the mask, and from the scissors and general aspect of his landlord, he divined the impending misfortune and "Rape of the Lock." He saw that in his strait he could reckon more upon the bare head under the bed than upon his own. The landlord, who, in his timidity, had carefully left the door wide open behind him to secure his retreat, drew near to the plantation of human pot-plants, with intent to play the part of reaper in the harvest-month--to combine the _roles_ of beard-shearer and hair-curler, and avenge them both. Siebenkaes wound up the thread as well as he could upon his covered fingers, so as to roll out the skull; but as the latter came much too slowly, and Meerbitzer far too quickly, he was obliged to come to his own a.s.sistance in the meantime (and this because evil spirits so often _breathe_ upon men, or _inspire_ them) by breathing out of the mouth-hole of his mask a long night-breeze upon the landlord. Meerbitzer could not explain to himself this most suspicious blast, which blew real azote, and a deadly simoom-wind, upon him; and all his warm const.i.tuent principles began to shoot into icicles. But, unluckily, the dead man had soon shot all his breath away, and was obliged to re-load his air-gun slowly. This suspension of hostilities brought the lock-raper to himself, and to his legs again; so that he made fresh preparations to take hold of the nightcap-ta.s.sel, and remove that gossamer (said nightcap) from the field of hair. But just as he was in the act of taking hold of it, he became aware that a something was beginning to move under the bed; he paused, and waited quietly (for it might be a rat) to see what this noise would turn out to be caused by. But, as he thus waited, it was all of a sudden borne in upon his mind that _a round thing_ was rolling up his legs, and coming higher and higher. In one instant he made a clutch at it with his empty hand (the other held the scissors), and, powerlessly as a pair of callipers, that hand rested on the ascending, slippery ball, which kept pressing it up and up. Meerbitzer grew visibly stiff in the legs, and his blood ran cold; but a fresh upward shove of his hand, and a glance at the ascending head, administered to him (ere he was felled to earth, wholly curdled to cheese), such a kick of terror that he flew like a feather across the floor, and out of the door like a cannonball shot straight at the bull"s eye by the cannon-powder of fear. He landed in the room downstairs with the open scissors in his hand, his mouth and eyes wide open, and a pallid spot on his face, compared to which his hair-powder and his shirt were court-mourning. Nevertheless, in this novel situation (I am glad to say it to his honour) he had the presence of mind not to say a word about what had happened; partly because ghost-stories cannot be related till nine days are over without the greatest danger to the narrator, partly because he could not well talk about his hair-shearing and privateering on _any_ day at all.
At one in the morning, Firmian told this tale to his friend with the same fidelity as I have endeavoured to observe in recounting it to the reader. This gave Leibgeber a useful hint to set a trusty body-guard over the n.o.ble corpse; and to this office, in the absence of chamberlains and other court officials, he could appoint no other than Saufinder.
On the last morning, which was to give our Siebenkaes "Notice to quit,"
arrived the _casa santa_ of mankind, our _chambre garnie_, our last _seed capsule_--the coffin for which we have to pay whatever is demanded. "This is the last building grant of life," said Henry, "the carpenter"s final piece of cheatery."
At half an hour after midnight--when neither bat nor night-watchman, nor beer-guest from the public-house, nor night-light was any longer to be seen; and only a field-cricket here and there could be heard in the sheaves, and a mouse or two in the houses--Leibgeber said to his sad and anxious friend, "March, now! Since you shuffled off this mortal coil, and entered into eternity, you have not known a moment of happiness or peace. All the rest is my affair. Wait for me at Hof on the Saale. We must see each other yet once more after death." Firmian fell in silence on his burning face, and wept. In this twilight hour he once more revisited all the flowery places of the past, behind which he was sinking as into a grave. His softened heart took delight in depositing a parting tear upon every piece of dress belonging to his sorrowing, bereaved Lenette--on every piece of her work--on every trace of her housewifely hand. He pressed her betrothal wreath of roses and forget-me-nots hard to his burning bosom, and placed Nathalie"s rosebuds in his pocket. And thus--mute, oppressed, with stifled sobs, and like one cast out by an earthquake from this earth on to the icy coasts of a strange world--he crept down the steps after his friend; pressed his helping hand once more at the door; and then night built the funeral vault of her gigantic shadow all over him. Leibgeber wept heartily as soon as he was lost to view. Tears fell on every stone which he pocketed, and upon the old block which he took in his arms, to imbed in the coffin-sh.e.l.l so as to give it the due weight of a corpse.
He filled up that haven of our bodies, and closed that ark of the covenant, hanging the coffin-key, like a black cross, upon his breast.
And now for the first time he slept in peace in the house of mourning.
All was done.
In the morning he made no secret of it, before the bearers and Lenette, that he had placed the body in the coffin with his own two arms, and not without considerable effort. She sighed to see her departed husband once again, but Henry had thrown away the door-key of the painted house in the darkness. He helped most diligently in the search for it (he had it about him all the time), but it was in vain, and many of the bystanders soon guessed that Henry was only deceiving, anxious to spare the widow"s weeping eyes any further sight of the cause of her sorrow.
So they went forth, with the mock pa.s.senger in the quasi coffin, to the churchyard which lay glistening in dew beneath the fresh blue sky. An icy thrill crept to Henry"s heart as he read the words on the gravestone. It had been lifted from off the flat, Moravian-like grave of Siebenkaes"s great-grandfather, and turned over, and on the smooth side glittered the newly-graven inscription--
"STAN: FIRMIAN SIEBENKaeS, Departed this life, 24th August, 1786."
This name had once been Henry"s own, and on the reverse side of the monument was his present name, Leibgeber. Henry reflected that in a few days _he_ would fall (with his name cast away from him) as a little brook into the world"s great ocean, and flow there without sh.o.r.es, and be lost amongst strange and unknown billows. He felt as though he himself with his old name, and his new, were going down to the grave.
So strangely mingled were his feelings that he seemed to himself as if he were sticking fast in the frozen stream of life, while overhead a burning sun was beating upon the ice-field, and he was lying between the glow and the frost. In addition to this, the Schulrath just then came running (with his handkerchief to his eyes and nose), and, in stammering accents of sorrow, imparted the news which had just reached the town--that the old King of Prussia had died on the 17th of the month.
The first thing that Leibgeber did was to look up to the morning sun, as though Frederick"s eye was beaming morning fire from it over the earth. It is easier to be a great king than a just one; it is easier to be admired than justified. A king lays his little finger upon the long arm of the monstrous lever, and, like Archimedes, lifts ships and countries with the muscles of his fingers; but it is only the _machine_ that is great--and the machinist, Fate--not he who works it. The voice of a king re-echoes like a peal of thunder amongst the numberless valleys around him; and every gentle ray he emits is reflected in the form of a burning beam condensed into a focus, from the countless plane-mirrors which are upon his throne. But Frederick could, at most, only be _lowered_ by a throne, by having to _sit_ upon it. His head would only have been _greater_ without the close-binding crown (its crown of thorns) and magic circle. And happy, thou great spirit, couldst thou still less become! For, although thou hadst broken down within thee the Bastilles and the prison-walls of all ign.o.ble pa.s.sions--although thou hadst given thy spirit what Franklin gave to earth, namely, lightning-conductors, musical gla.s.ses, and freedom--although no kingdom was to thee so lovely as that of truth, and there was none which thou so lovedst to enlarge--although thou didst permit the emasculate philosophy of French encyclopaedists to hide from thee eternity only, but not divinity, only the _belief_ in virtue, but not thine own--yet did thy loving bosom accept nothing from friendship and humanity but the echoes of their sighs--the flute. And thy spirit, which, with its great roots like the mahogany-tree, often shivered the rocks it grew upon--thy spirit, in the fell battle of thy wishes with thy doubts, in the contest of thy ideal world with the real one, and the one in which thou didst believe, felt a painful discord which no mild faith in a _second_ softened to harmony. And therefore there was upon thy throne no place of rest but that which thou hast now attained.
Some men bring all humanity before our eyes at a glance, as certain events bring our whole lives. There fell upon Henry"s breast strong splinters of the fallen mountain whose crash he heard.