Part 33 (1/2)
”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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 was.h.i.+ng 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,”