Morning brings refreshing to the laid corn of humanity, whether it be laid upon the hard bed of sickness, or on the softer mattress of ordinary health; its breezes lift the bowed heads of both flowers and men: but our sick man remained prostrate. Things seemed distinctly worse with him—he could not disguise from himself that he was losing ground; at all events he resolved to “set his house in order.” This first quarter of the hour of death which the death bell tolled, smote like a sharp and heavy bell-hammer upon Lenette’s heart, whence the warm stream of the old love burst forth in bitter tears. Firmian could not bear the sight of this disconsolate weeping; he stretched his arms beseechingly, and the suffering creature laid herself between them in gentle obedience, on to his breast, their tears, their sighs, and their hearts mingled in the warmest affection, and thus they rested in happiness (though only upon wounds) at this brief distance from the boundary-hill of parting.
For this poor soul’s sake, then, he grew visibly better. Another improvement in his condition was necessary, moreover, to account for the happy frame of mind in which he executed his last will and testament. Leibgeber expressed satisfaction that the patient was able to take some dinner on the table-cloth of the bed-quilt, and swallow the contents of a sick man’s soup-dish about the size of a pond. “The good spirits,” said Leibgeber to Peltzstiefel, “which our invalid is beginning to exhibit again, give me very considerable hopes indeed; though it was evidently only to please his wife that he took the soup.”
Nobody was fonder of lying, or lied oftener, out of satire or humour, than Leibgeber and no one more utterly detested serious untruthfulness than he. He could tell a thousand lies in fun, but not two in a case of serious necessity. For the former he had at his finger’s end every possible deceptive trick of face and language; for the latter not one.
In the forenoon the Schulrath and Merbitzer, the landlord, were summoned to the bedside. “Gentlemen,” began the sick man, “I am thinking of having my last will this afternoon—of declaring, at Nature’s place of execution, the three things which I desire—as the condemned in Athens were allowed to do; but what I wish to do at the present moment is to open one of my testaments before I make my second, or (to speak more accurately) the codicil of my first. I wish my friend Leibgeber to pack up, and keep possession of, all my scribblings as soon as I myself am stuck into my last addressed envelope. Further (and in this I follow the precedent of the Danish Kings, the old Dukes of Austria, and the noble Spaniards—of whom the first were interred in their armour, the second in lion’s skins, the third in miserable Capuchins’ gowns)—I will and ordain that there shall be no hesitation about planting me in the bed of the next world in the very self-same old pod and shell in which I have vegetated in this; in brief, exactly as I am while now testating. This injunction necessitates my making my third that the woman who comes to lay me out shall be paid, and at once sent about her business, because all my life through I have had a most special antipathy to two women—the woman who washes us into life, and the woman who washes us out of it (though in a bigger bath-tub)—the midwife and the woman who lays out the corpse. She is not to lay a finger upon me, nor is anybody except my Henry there.” His hatred of these servants of life and death may probably have proceeded from the same causes as my own, namely the imperious and rapacious nature of the controlling power which these she-planters and caterers for the cradle and the bier exercise in squeezing us just in the two unarmed and weaponless hours of our deepest gladness and our deepest sorrow.
“I further will that as soon as my face has made the signal of adieu, Henry shall roof it over and shield it for ever with our long-necked mask, which I brought down from the box upstairs. I also desire that, when I take my departure from all the fields and plains of my youthful days, and hear nothing behind me but the rustle of the haycocks of the aftermath, I may, at all events, have my wife’s silken garland laid upon my breast, by way of game-counter to mark the joys I have lost. A man can’t go more suitably than with mock insignia, such as that, out of a life which has dished him up such a number of pasteboard pasties full of nothing but wind. Lastly, I will that, when I am gone on my journey, nobody shall clang after me from the church-steeple (like the people of Carlsbad), for we sick and transient watering-place visitors of life (like those of Carlsbad) are received and sent on our way with music from the steeples, especially as the Church’s servants are more expensive than the Carlsbad steeple-man, who only asks three pieces for blowing people in and out.”
At this point he asked that Lenette’s profile-portrait might be given him in bed, and he said, in a faltering voice, “I should like my dear Henry and the landlord to leave the room for a minute, and let me be alone with the Schulrath and my wife.”
When this was done he gazed fondly, a long while, in silence, upon the little likeness. His eyes ran over with sorrow like a broken river-bank. He gave the picture to the Schulrath, paused, overcome by emotion, and said at length: “To you, my faithful friend, and to you alone, can I give this beloved portrait: you are her friend, as well as mine. Oh God! there is not a soul in the great, wide world that will take care of my dear Lenette if you forsake her. Don’t cry so bitterly, my darling; he will be everything to you. Ah! dearest of friends, this helpless, innocent heart will break in desolate loneliness of sorrow unless you protect it and console it. Oh! never abandon it, as I am doing!”
The Schulrath swore by the Almighty that he would never leave her, and he took her hand and pressed it (without looking at her) as she wept, and hung, with eyes raining down with tears, upon the face of his friend, whose voice was so soon to be mute for ever. But Lenette forced him away from her husband’s breast, and liberated her hand, and sunk down upon the lips which had so deeply touched her heart. Firmian clasped her with his left arm, and stretched his right hand to his friend—thus holding to his oppressed bosom the two things on earth that are nearest heaven, friendship and love.
And it is even this very matter which is an endless source of comfort and delight to me in you deluded and disagreeing mortals—that you all love one another heartily and utterly when you only get a chance of seeing one another divested of coverings and fogs—that when we fear we are growing blind we are only growing cold—and that, as soon as ever Death has raised our brothers and sisters up clear of the clouds of our own errors, our hearts melt into bliss and love when we see them soaring as beautiful human creatures, no longer distorted by the mists and concave mirrors of this world, up in the translucent æther; and cannot but sigh forth, “Ah! I should never have misunderstood you if I had always seen you thus.” This is why every loving soul stretches its arms out to those whom poets exhibit to our low-placed eyes, as geniuses, in their cloud-built heaven, though, could he let them sink down upon our breasts, they would lose their beauteous transfiguration in a few short days upon the dirty earth of our necessities and mistakes: as the crystal glacier-water which refreshes, without chilling, must be caught in the air as it drips from its ice-diamond, because it is made impure by the air the moment it touches the earth.[[87]]
The Schulrath went out, but only to the doctor. This distinguished Generalissimo of Friend Death (who did not bear the title of “Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health” for nothing, but for money) was very willing to come and see the patient: firstly, because the Schulrath was a man of means and consideration; and, secondly, because Siebenkæs in his capacity of a member of the Corpse Lottery (of which the doctor also was a corresponding member and frère servant), ought not to be allowed to die. For this burial-fund was, in one of its more important aspects, a species of Government Savings’ Bank, or Imperial Treasury for members of the better classes. The sight of this Supreme Councillor of Health, advancing in battle-array, terrified Leibgeber to death. He could not but fear that the advent of the doctor might make matters take a more serious turn, so that Siebenkæs might transmit to posterity a celebrity like that of Molière, who died on the stage while performing the part of the ‘Malade Imaginaire.’ The relation between doctor and patient seemed to him as indeterminate as that between woodpeckers, or bark-beetles, and trees; inasmuch as it is still a moot question whether the trees wither in consequence of these creatures boring into them, and laying their eggs in them, or if (on the contrary) it is because the bark is worm-eaten and the trunk dead, that the beetles come flying to the trees. My opinion as regards beetles and woodpeckers (and doctors as well) is that each is alternately cause and effect; and that there is no such thing as a living creature whose existence can possibly be taken as pre-supposing decay, because, if so, at the creation of the world there would have had to be a dead horse created for the bluebottles, and a rotten cheese for the mites.