"Is the doctor better?"
"I have not heard that he is ill," I said. "He was engaged with the arbitration again to-day."
"I cannot get those words of his out of my head," she said; "they haunt me—'Here we will close.' I cannot help thinking what it would be never to hear that faithful voice again."
"You are depressed, my love," I said, "at the thought of Dr. Luther's leaving us this week. But by-and-by we will stay some little time at Wittemberg, and hear him again there."
"If God will!" she said gravely. "What God has given us, through him, can never be taken away."
I have inquired again about him, however, frequently to-day, but there seems no cause for anxiety. He retired from the Great Hall where the conferences and the meals take place, at eight o'clock; and this evening, as often before during his visit, Dr. Jonas overheard him praying aloud at the window of his chamber.
Thursday, 18th February.
The worst—the very worst—has come to pass! The faithful voice is, indeed, silenced to us on earth for ever.
Here where the life began it has closed. He who, sixty-three years ago, lay here a little helpless babe, lies here again a lifeless corpse. Yet it is not with sixty-three years ago, but with three days since that we feel the bitter contrast. Three days ago he was among us the counsellor, the teacher, the messenger of God, and now that heart, so open, so tender to sympathize with sorrows, and so strong to bear a nation's burden, has ceased to beat.
Yesterday it was observed that he was feeble and ailing. The Princes of Anhalt and the Count Albert of Mansfeld, with Dr. Jonas and his other friends, entreated him to rest in his own room during the morning. He was not easily persuaded to spare himself, and probably would not have yielded then, had he not felt that the work of reconciliation was accomplished, in all save a few supplementary details. Much of the forenoon, therefore, he reposed on a leathern couch in his room, occasionally rising, with the restlessness of illness, and pacing the room, or standing in the window praying, so that Dr. Jonas and Cœlius, who were in another part of the room, could hear him. He dined, however, at noon, in the Great Hall, with those assembled there. At dinner he said to some near him, "If I can, indeed, reconcile the rulers of my birth-place with each other, and then, with God's permission, accomplish the journey back to Wittemberg, I would go home and lay myself down to sleep in my grave, and let the worms devour my body."