"He was a very good preacher, particularly of funeral sermons, hence even a very good preacher asked him for godfather, and the godson stands among the present company and takes his part in the weeping, for the stomach-ache.... Only great court preachers, who deliver the princely funeral oration in the Cathedral Church, can boast of what I, to my greatest satisfaction, now hear, that they make the mourning company laugh, and this is to me an earnest that my consolation is effectual....
"And yet one who lies upon the death-bed has more consolation than one who only stands at the foot of the bed. The souterrain of the earth's crust is peopled only by still, reposing human beings, who draw close together; but above the souterrain stand their uneasy friends, and long to go down to the beloved arms of dust; for the linen on the eye of the dead is truly a padded hat for the cold brow, the coffin is a parachute to the unhappy, and the winding-sheet the last bandage of the widest wounds. Ah! why does weary man love better to sink into the short than into the long, undisturbed, sure sleep? Take, then, good Sebastian, the death-certificate as an eternal peace-instrument from the hand of gentle nature....
"But, the Deuse! where then is our dead man? what has the white cap to do down there? I see the corpse in the looking-glass opposite—it must be somewhere—I must fetch it":—with a shudder running through his soul he sprang down; an exalted frenzy passed, through the stages of tears, of smiles, of torpor, up and down his face. He ran behind a screen which had been placed before his wax statue—and brought out the waxen man—and threw him down as a corpse—and a veil was wound over the corpse—and with a distorted face he mounted the chair to proceed:—
"This is the night-corpse,—the scorified, carbonized man,—into such stiff lumps are conscious beings fastened and compelled to turn them round. Why do you tremble at me, hearers, because I tremble, to stare so at this overturned form of humanity?—I see a spectre hover round this corpse which is an 'I.' ... I! I! thou precipice that in the mirror of thought runnest back deep down into the darkness,—I! thou mirror within the mirror,—thou terror within a terror! Draw the veil away from the corpse! I will boldly look on the dead, till he destroys me."
Every one shuddered in response; but one of the Englishmen drew aside the veil from the dead.... Rigid, speechless, horror-struck and quaking, Victor looked upon the unveiled face, which also in a living shape hung round his soul; but at last tears gushed out down his cold cheeks, and then he spoke in a lower tone, as if his heart were melting:—
"See how the corpse smiles! why, then, dost thou smile so, Sebastian? Wast thou perchance so happy on the earth, that thy mouth stiffened and grew cold in a rapture of delight?... No, happy thou canst scarcely have been,—joy itself was often to thee a seed-vessel of sorrow. And thou saidst thyself very often, I am well contented and deserve hardly my hopes and wishes, to say nothing of their fulfilment.—
"Flamin! look upon this assumed countenance here,—it smiles from friendship, not from joy. Flamin, this extinct breast was arched over a heart that loved thee without limit, and even unto death.
"And this, after all, is the only misfortune of the poor man now at rest. In and for himself, and so far as concerned his original condition and temper, the good Bastian might have fared well enough; but he was too sensitive for joy,—too inconsiderate,—too ardent,—almost too much a child of fantasy. He wanted even to love (during his lifetime), and it could not be done. The flower-goddess of love passed by him, she denied him the transfiguration of man, the melodrama of the heart, the golden age of life.... Cold form, erect thyself, and show men the tears that flow from a tender heart, which breaks for love and finds none!...
"If our Horion was not happy, then, of course, it may well be a comfort to him, if he is permitted even in the noonday of life to take his siesta, if he is permitted to die, and released from the hotly-beating heart, hushed by the death-angel, to lay himself down so early under the long shroud, which the genius of humanity draws over whole peoples, as the gardener draws the cover over the flower-bed to shield it from sun and rain,—against the glow of our joys, against the gush of our sorrow.... Rest thou too, Horion!" ...
His grief at these words from the old dream so overmastered and so unmanned him that he passed over from it—by way either of excuse or of relief—into an almost frenzied humor.