"And I do not wish to be known," cries the doctor, "nor to be exhibited to the public as a curiosity of natural history, least of all by you who have always seen me in a false light--if indeed a mammoth like you can see anything in the right light. If I am to have my portrait taken, it shall be by your wife, who ought to be ashamed, by the way, to neglect her noble art so, out of mere idolatry of you and of her children--or else by Oscar. Apropos, will you not include in your book a thorough analysis of all Oscar's paintings, or at least of his chief works, and thus cover yourself with ridicule, as you really know nothing whatever about art? or will you not set forth in detail all that Kurt has accomplished in our railroad undertakings, and his inventions in various departments of machinery, and so, as he is modesty itself, cover him with a garment of confusion? Or will you not denounce Benno to the government because his agricultural school at Zehrendorf which grows and flourishes so quietly, is a formidable rival to the official country institutes?"
"Scold away, doctor: you have not an idea how admirably all you say fits into my last chapter. I should like to let you have the last word there, as everywhere else."
"That was all that was wanting!" cried the doctor in wrath, and ran out of the door, the last of our guests.
This scene happened yesterday evening, and I said to Paula, "Was it not a happy idea to leave the last word to my best, oldest, dearest friend, to whom I owed more than I could ever find words to say."
"I could never know which was to be the last touch in my pictures until I had given it," said Paula: "perhaps it will be the same way with your book."
To-day, thinking it over in the early dawn, I find that Paula was right. I feel that I must close, and yet have the feeling that I must not stop yet; that I have forgotten or omitted something, I know not what; that I owe the reader, despite my solemn disallowance erewhile, information on a multitude of points.
For example, how it happens that I am sitting at my writing table "in the early dawn," after having, as it seems, a little company of friends with me yesterday evening: have I then been writing all night until morning overtook me?
Nothing of the sort. The early dawn, that is to say, four o'clock in winter, and in midsummer, as now, often two o'clock, has for years found me in my office, reading, calculating, drawing, and now, since I have had this book on hand, for the most part writing. I have all my life been a good sleeper, so far that my sleep is very profound and mostly dreamless: but I have long accustomed myself to do with half the sleep that others find indispensable. The Doctor says I have too large a heart, like most big good-natured fellows of rather limited intelligence and with broad shoulders, whom nature has marked out for carrying burdens and playing the part of anvil; but he smiles when he says so, and I do not know if he be speaking in earnest or in jest.
I have been just now standing at the open window, after extinguishing the lamp by which I have been writing. In the perfectly cloudless, light-green, July sky stood the sickle of the waning moon, but the stars had all faded from sight. Over my window, just under the eaves, sat a swallow, and sang, rocking her little head from side to side and looking towards the east where the sun would presently rise. I have never heard a sweeter song, and even now while I write its melody fills my whole soul. From one of the tall chimneys of the factory, whose main building turns its front towards the villa, arose a column of dense smoke springing slender and straight as a pine-shaft high into the clear air. There is a great casting to be made to-day, and Klaus has had his furnaces lighted early.
I see this picture, as I have endeavored to describe it, often and often in the early morning, and it always inspires me with cheerfulness and joy, and with a thankful heart I greet the rising sun.