The last words were uttered brokenly, his head sank softly forward. He had dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion. After a few minutes he came to himself, and Feiwel Silbermann carried him to bed while I stood there. We administered some bouillon and Tokay wine; but he remained apathetic, and only murmured, almost unintelligibly: "Yes—times change—the Khille is no longer fromm." Then he fell asleep again.
I was greatly disturbed on leaving him, and returned the next morning at the very earliest hour possible. He was asleep. Two days later he had passed into the eternal sleep of death.
November 23.
To-day we carried Simon Eichelkatz to his last resting-place. Only a few people accompanied him. But at his grave stood a solitary man.
"Myself I sacrifice to my love, and my neighbor I sacrifice as myself, thus runs the speech of all creators."
The Nietzsche phrase flitted through my mind, a phrase that I had heard explained by the son, the heir of that unlearned, wise old man whom we had just consigned to the earth. "But all creators are hard—thus spoke Zarathustra."
And there—
In a soft though intelligible voice the solitary man repeated the Hebrew words, as he shovelled the earth onto the coffin:
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest; but the spirit returns to God who gave it."
Then he raised himself up, his eye fastened on the growing mound.