I am about to call for matches, but remember just in time that it is forbidden to strike a light in the grave or rather, that it is contrary to the very conception of the grave to be illuminated.
This thought annoys me and I continue: "The laurel is given here not to the distinguished alone. I must correct that expression. Are not we corpses distinguished per se as compared to the miserable plebeian living? Is not this noble rest in which we dwell an unmistakable sign of true aristocracy? And the laurel that is given to the dead, that laurel, my masters, fills me with as high a pride as would the diadem of a king."
I ceased. For I could rightly expect enthusiastic applause at the close of this effective passage. But as everything remained silent I turned my thoughts once more upon myself, and considered, too, that my finest speeches would find no public here.
"It is, besides, in utter contradiction to the conception of death to deliver speeches," I said to myself, but at once I began another in order to establish an opposition against myself.
"Conception? What is a conception? What do I care for conceptions here? I am dead. I have earned the sacred right to disregard such things. If those two-penny living creatures cannot imagine the grave otherwise than dark or the dead otherwise than dumb—why, I surely have no need to care for that."
In the meantime my fingers had scratched about on the riband in the vain hope of inferring from the gilt and raised letters on the silk their form and perhaps the significance of the legend. My efforts were, however, without success. Hence I continued outraged: "In order to speak first of the conception of the grave as dark, I should like to ask any intelligent and expert corpse: 'Why is the grave necessarily dark?' Should not we who are dead rather demand of an age that has made such enormous progress in illumination, which has not only invented gas and electric lighting and complied with the regulations for the illumination of streets, but has at a slight cost succeeded in giving to every corner of the world the very light of day—may we not demand of such an age that it put an end to the old-fashioned darkness of the grave? It would seem as if the most elementary piety would constrain the living to this improvement. But when did the living ever feel any piety? We must enforce from them the necessaries of a worthy existence in death. Gentlemen, I close with the last, or, I had better say, the first words of our great Goethe whose genius with characteristic power of divination foresaw the unworthy condition of the inner grave and the necessities of a truly noble and liberal minded corpse. For what else could be the meaning of that saying which I herewith inscribe upon our banner: 'Light, more light!' That must henceforth be our device and our battlecry."
This time, too, silence was my only answer. Whence I inferred that in the grave there is neither striving nor crying out. Nevertheless I continued to amuse myself and made many a speech against the management of the cemetery, against the insufficiency of the method of flat pressure upon the dead now in use, and similar outrages. In the meantime the storm above had raged and the rain lashed its fill and a peaceful silence descended upon all things.
Only from time to time did I hear a short, dull uniform thunder, which I could not account for until it occurred to me that it was produced by the footsteps of passers-by, the noise of which was thus echoed and multiplied in the earth.
And then suddenly I heard the sound of human voices.
The sound came vertically down to my head.