"We are waiting for you."
And for the sixth time I returned to my family, but this time firmly resolved to use the remaining weeks to finish my story....
[EPILOGUE]
Seated at my writing-table, pen in hand, I fainted; a feverish attack prostrated me. This very inopportune attack frightened me, for I had not been seriously ill for fifteen years. It was not fear of death, oh no. Death held no terrors for me; but I was thirty-nine years old and at the end of a turbulent career, my last word still unsaid, the promises of my youth only partly fulfilled, pregnant with plans for the future. This sudden cutting of the knot was far from pleasing me. For the last four years I had lived with my family in half-voluntary exile; I was at the end of my resources, and had settled down in a small town in Bavaria; I had come into conflict with the law, for one of my books had been confiscated, and I had been banished from my own country. I had but one desire left when I was thrown on my sick-bed—the desire for revenge.
A struggle arose within me; I had not sufficient strength left in me to call for help. The fever shook me as one shakes a feather bed; it seized me by the throat and throttled me; it put its foot on my breast and scorched my brain, so that my eyes started from their sockets. I was alone with Death, who had crept in by stealth and was attacking me.
But I was unwilling to die; I resisted, and an obstinate fight began. The tension of my nerves relaxed, the blood coursed through my veins. My brain twitched like a polypus that has been thrown into vinegar. But before loner I realised that I must succumb in this dance of death. I relinquished my hold, fell backwards and submitted to the fatal embrace of the dread monster.
Immediately an indescribable calm came over me, a voluptuous weakness composed my limbs, and perfect peace soothed body and soul, which had lacked all wholesome recreation during so many years of toil.
I fervently desired that it really should be the end. Slowly all will to live ebbed away. I ceased to observe, to feel, to think. I became unconscious, and a delicious sensation of blankness filled the void created by the cessation of the racking pain, the tormenting thoughts, the secret terrors.
When I regained consciousness I found my wife sitting by my bedside and gazing at me with terrified eyes.