¶ The windows looking upon the garden were opened, early next morning, and the servants of the household gathered there to look at the master, at rest.
He was seemingly asleep in his four-poster bed, his head slightly inclined to the left; his expression was that of one gently dreaming; his arms were resting over the coverlet, and in his left hand he held one white and three red roses, a last love-token from an Austrian lady.
¶ The expression of his features was, at the end, proud and noble; but the face was as grey as ashes; for the fire of life was out at last!
¶ Later, came two Cuirassiers, in white, with drawn swords; and these massive figures stood there by the bedside, and by and by kept solemn guard beside the coffin; also, near by were two Foresters, in green.
¶ Books, papers, telegrams and a laurel wreath were in the death chamber, where the master had worked to the end.
Not far away was his favorite chessboard, also, within touch the Emperor’s last present, a fac-simile of Frederick the Great’s great crook-headed gold cane; a step the other way the globe of the earth that Bismarck used to roll over with his big hand, when he studied his endless foreign political combinations.
¶ Later, came the magnificent funeral with the high military, and all the rest; but we think we shall take leave of him in his old room with these simple objects around him, his tools of work, his big oak desk, his mounds of state papers, his writings, his quill pens, his box of blue sand, his pipes, steins and champagne glasses, his letters, his telegrams, his great heaps of books, his immense correspondence on the affairs of nations, his diplomas from universities, his degrees of law, philosophy and letters, and finally, his big Ulmar dogs.
¶ Here we leave him as one asleep, reminded of his final words, uttered when the master was breaking fast with the infirmities of his eighty-three years:
¶ “There is only one happy day left for me. It is the one on which I shall not wake again.”