He was not one weakly to sigh for sleep before night; and we now know too well from how deep a sense of bodily weariness and weakness that wish sprang. Tension of heart and mind, and incessant work,—the toil of a daily mechanical labourer, with the keen, continuous thought of the highest thinker,—working as much as any drudging slave, and as intensely as if all he did was his delight,—at sixty-three the strong, peasant frame was worn out as most men's are at eighty, and he longed for rest.
In the afternoon he complained of painful pressure on the breast, and requested that it might be rubbed with warm cloths. This relieved him a little; and he went to supper again with his friends in the Great Hall. At table he spoke much of eternity, and said he believed his own death was near; yet his conversation was not only cheerful, but at times gay, although it related chiefly to the future world. One near him asked whether departed saints would recognize each other in heaven. He said, Yes, he thought they would.
When he left the supper-table he went to his room.
In the night,—last night,—his two sons, Paul and Martin, thirteen and fourteen years of age, sat up to watch with him, with Justus Jonas, whose joys and sorrows he had shared through so many years. Cœlius and Aurifaber also were with him. The pain in the breast returned, and again they tried rubbing him with hot cloths. Count Albert came, and the Countess, with two physicians, and brought him some shavings from the tusk of a sea-unicorn, deemed a sovereign remedy He took it, and slept till ten. Then he awoke, and attempted once more to pace the room a little; but he could not, and returned to bed. Then he slept again till one. During those two or three hours of sleep, his host Albrecht, with his wife, Ambrose, Jonas, and Luther's son, watched noiselessly beside him, quietly keeping up the fire. Everything depended on how long he slept, and how he woke.
The first words he spoke when he awoke sent a shudder of apprehension through their hearts.
He complained of cold, and asked them to pile up more fire. Alas! the chill was creeping over him which no effort of man could remove.
Dr. Jonas asked him if he felt very weak.
"Oh," he replied, "how I suffer! My dear Jonas, I think I shall die here, at Eisleben, where I was born and baptized."
His other friends were awakened, and brought in to his bed-side.
Jonas spoke of the sweat on his brow as a hopeful sign, but Dr. Luther answered—