And then she thought of that ghastly comparison of himself to the ancient German singer—the poor clerk of the Chronicle of Limburg—whose sweet songs were sung and whistled from morning to night all through Germany; while the Minnesinger himself, smitten with leprosy, hooded and cloaked, and carrying the lazarus-clapper, moved through the shuddering city. God's satire weighed heavily upon him, indeed. Silently she held out her hand, and he gave her his bloodless fingers; she touched the strangely satin skin, and felt the fever beneath.
"It cannot be my little Lucy," he said reproachfully. "She used to kiss me. But even Lucy's kiss cannot thrill my paralyzed lips."
She stooped and kissed his lips. His little beard felt soft and weak as the hair of a baby.
"Ah, I have made my peace with the world and with God. Now He sends me His death-angel."
She struggled with the lump in her throat. "You must be indeed a prey to illusions, if you mistake an Englishwoman for Azrael."
"Ach, why was I so bitter against England? I was only once in England, years ago. I knew nobody, and London seemed so full of fog and Englishmen. Now England has avenged herself beautifully. She sends me you. Others too mount the hundred and five steps. I am an annexe to the Paris Exhibition. Remains of Heinrich Heine. A very pilgrimage of the royal demi-monde! A Russian princess brings the hateful odor of her pipe," he said with scornful satisfaction, "an Italian princess babbles of her aches and pains, as if in competition with mine. But the gold medal would fall to my nerves, I am convinced, if they were on view at the Exhibition. No, no, don't cry; I meant you to laugh. Don't think of me as you see me now; pretend to me I am as you first knew me. But how fine and beautiful you have grown; even to my fraction of an eye, which sees the sunlight as through black gauze. Fancy little Lucy has a husband; a husband—and the poodle still takes three baths a day. Are you happy, darling? are you happy?"
She nodded. It seemed a sacrilege to claim happiness.
"Das ist schön! Yes, you were always so merry. God be thanked! How refreshing to find one woman with a heart, and that her husband's. Here the women have a metronome under their corsets, which beats time, but not music. Himmel! What a whiff of my youth you bring me! Does the sea still roll green at the end of Boulogue pier, and do the sea-gulls fly? while I lie here, a Parisian Prometheus, chained to my bed-post. Ah, had I only the bliss of a rock with the sky above me! But I must not complain; for six years before I moved here I had nothing but a ceiling to defy. Now my balcony gives sideways on the Champs-Elysées, and sometimes I dare to lie outside on a sofa and peer at beautiful, beautiful Paris, as she sends up her soul in sparkling fountains, and incarnates herself in pretty women, who trip along like dance music. Look!"
To please him she went to a window and saw, upon the narrow iron-grilled balcony, a tent of striped chintz, like the awning of a café, supported by a light iron framework. Her eyes were blurred by unshed tears, and she divined rather than saw the far-stretching Avenue, palpitating with the fevered life of the Great Exhibition year; the intoxicating sunlight, the horse-chestnut trees dappling with shade the leafy footways, the white fountain-spray and flaming flower-beds of the Rond Point, the flashing flickering stream of carriages flowing to the Bois with their freight of beauty and wealth and insolent vice.
"The first time I looked out of that window," he said, "I seemed to myself like Dante at the end of the Divine Comedy, when once again he beheld the stars. You cannot know what I felt when after so many years I saw the world again for the first time, with half an eye, for ever so little a space. I had my wife's opera-glass in my hand, and I saw with inexpressible pleasure a young vagrant vendor of pastry offering his goods to two ladies in crinolines, with a small dog. I closed the glass; I could see no more, for I envied the dog. The nurse carried me back to bed and gave me morphia. That day I looked no more. For me the Divine Comedy was far from ended. The divine humorist has even descended to a pun. Talk of Mahomet's coffin. I lie between the two Champs-Elysées, the one where warm life palpitates, and that other, where the pale ghosts flit."