DR. [OE]LHAFEN AND MEDICAL BOOT AND SHOEMAKING--THE BURIAL
SOCIETY--A DEATH'S HEAD IN THE SADDLE--FREDERICK II. AND HIS
FUNERAL ORATION.
As a step preliminary to everything else, Leibgeber quartered the
sorrowing widow down stairs with the hairdresser, with the view of
rendering the intermediate state after death easier to the dead man.
"You must emigrate," he told her, "and keep out of the sight of these
sad memorials round us here, until _he_ has been taken away."
Superstitious terror made her consent, so that he had no difficulty in
giving the dear departed his food and drink. He compared him to a
walled-up vestal, finding in her cell a lamp, bread, water, milk, and
oil (according to Plutarch, in 'Numa'); and added, "Unless you are more
like the earwig, which, when cut in two, turns about and devours its
own remains." By jokes like these he brightened (or, at all events,
strove to brighten) the cloudy and autumnal soul of his dear friend,
who could see nothing all around him save ruins of his bygone life,
from the widowed Lenette's clothes to her work. The bonnet-block, which
he had struck on the day of the thunder-storm, had to be put away in a
corner out of his sight, because he said it made Gorgon faces at him.
Next day, our good corpse-watcher, Leibgeber, had to perform the
labours of a Hercules, an Ixion, and a Sisyphus combined. Congress
after congress, picket after picket, came to see the dead man and speak
well of him--for it is not until they make their _exit_ that we applaud
men and actors, and we think people are _morally_ beautified by death
as Lavater thought they were physically. But Leibgeber drove everybody
away from the death-chamber, saying it had been one of his friend's
last requests that he should do so.
Then came the woman to lay out the corpse (Death's Abigail), and wanted
to begin washing and dressing it. Henry tussled with her, paid her, and
banished her. Then (in presence of the widow and Peltzstiefel), he had
to pretend to _be_ pretending to hide a bleeding heart behind outward
resignation. "But I see through him," said Stiefel, "without the
slightest trouble. It is because he is not a Christian that he is
striving to play the Stoic and the Philosopher." Stiefel was here
alluding to that specious, empty, and frivolous hardness which is
exhibited by Zenos of the world and of the court, who are like those
wooden figures which are made to look like stone statues and pillars by
being smeared over with a coating of stone-dust. Also the share, or
dividend, of the burial-fund was got together (by being collected on a
plate from the members of that body), and this led to its coming to the
knowledge of our old acquaintance Dr. [Oe]lhafen, who was one of the
paying members. He took occasion, on his morning round of visits, to
drop in at the house of mourning, with the view of provoking his
brother in science to as great an extent as he could. He therefore
affected not to have heard a word about the death, and began by asking
how the invalid was getting on. "According to the _latest_ bulletins,"
said Henry, "he is not _getting_ on at all--he has _got_ on; in a word,
Herr Protomedicus [Oe]lhafen, he is gone. August, March, and December
are months when Death sends out his pressgang and gathers in his
vintage."
"That lowering powder of yours," said the vindictive Doctor, "seems to
have lowered _his_ temperature pretty effectively; he's cool enough
_now_, eh?" This pained Leibgeber, and he answered, "I am sorry to say,
he is. However, we did our best with him. We got your emetic down his
throat, but the only thing he got rid of was that most terribly
morbific of all matters in man--his soul. You, Mr. Protomedicus, are
judge in a criminal court, having the power of life and death; whereas,
you see, I am only an advocate, and possessed of a jurisdiction so far
inferior that _I_ didn't dare meddle with anything, least of all the
fellow's _life_; a nice face he would have made if I had."
"Well, so he _has_ made a face at it, and a long face, too--the
hippocratic face," answered the Doctor, not wholly without wit. "I
can't but believe you," answered Leibgeber, in a gentle manners "I have
not the least doubt you are perfectly right. We laymen, you see, have
so few opportunities of seeing those faces, whereas doctors can study
the hippocratic countenance in their patients every day of their lives.
And, of course, an experienced doctor is always distinguished by a
quickness of eye which enables him to tell at a glance if a patient be
going to die--which is an impossibility to other people, who, not being
doctors in practice, have not many opportunities of seeing people
depart this life."
"A medical connoisseur of _your_ cultivation and experience as a matter
of course put mustard poultices to the patient's feet? Only, I presume,
it was too late for them to be of any use, was it?"
"I _did_ manage to hit upon the notion of trying that trick of soling
my poor friend's feet with mustard and vinegar" (answered Leibgeber),
"and paper-hanging the calves of his legs with blisters; but the
patient (at all times rather fond of his joke, as you know), called
that sort of thing 'medical boot and shoemaking,' and called us
doctors 'Death's shoemakers,' who, when Nature has cried to a poor
fellow 'Look out! Mind your head!' go and put Spanish flies on to him
by way of Spanish boots, mustard-plasters by way of _Cothurni_, and
cupping-glasses by way of leg-irons: as if a man could not make
his appearance in the next world without red heels consisting of
mustard-blister marks, and red cardinal stockings of plaster blisters.
And so saying, the deceased aimed a skilful kick at my face and the
plaster, and said the connoisseurs were like stinging-flies, which
always fasten upon the legs."
"He wasn't far wrong, I suspect, as regarded _you_. A 'shoemaker of
Death' might perhaps put something on just under that _caput tribus
insanabile_ of yours which wouldn't fit so badly," said the Doctor, and
made off as fast as he could.
I have already said a few words concerning those emetic powders of his,
and I now wish to add what follows. If he _does_ send people to their
long homes by means of them, the chief difference between him and a
fox[91] is that (according to the ancient naturalist), the latter
imitates the distant sound of a man being sick to make the dogs run to
him, that he may attack them. At the same time even those whose opinion
of the members of the medical profession is the highest conceivable
must admit that there are certain limits to their criminal
jurisdiction. As by European International Law, no army can shoot down
another with glass bullets, or poisoned ones, but only with leaden
ones--further, as no nation may put poison into the enemies' food, or
wells, but only dirt--so, although the medical police allow a
practising physician (of the higher jurisdiction) the utmost freedom in
the administration of narcotics, drastics, emetics, diuretics, and the
whole pharmacopœia, in a word (so that it would be a breach of the
police regulations to attempt to prevent him), yet were the most
celebrated of doctors, town or country, within the limits of his
jurisdiction to set to work and give people poison-balls in place of
pills, or ratsbane by way of a strong emetic, the upper courts of
justice would take a pretty serious view of the matter--unless it were
for ague that he prescribed the mouse-poison. Nay, I suspect that an
entire medical _collegium_ would scarce escape some judicial inquiry if
it were to take a sword and run a man through with it (though it might
open his veins with a lancet at any hour of the day or night if it
pleased), or if it were to knock him down with a warlike but
nonsurgical instrument. Thus we find in the criminal records that
doctors who threw people into the water from bridges have by no means
got clear off--that being a different affair altogether from putting
them into a _smaller_ bath, mineral or otherwise.
When the hairdresser heard that the corpse-lottery money had safely
arrived in its harbour of refuge, he came upstairs and offered to curl
his deceased lodger's hair, make him a pigtail, and let his comb and
pomatum accompany him under the sod. Leibgeber was obliged to be
economical on the poor widow's account, for more than half her feathers
were plucked out of her already by the innumerable insect-feelers,
vultures'-talons, and boars'-tusks of the domestics of death, and he
said the most he could do was to buy the comb and put it in the
deceased's waistcoat-pocket, so that he might do it himself after his
own taste. He said the same to the barber, and added that, of course,
as hair goes on growing in the grave, the whole secret society (and
fruit-bearing society) therein is adorned with fine beards, like Swiss
of the age of sixty. These two collaborateurs in hair (who revolve
round the same central-sphere like two of the satellites of Uranus)
went off with abbreviated hopes, and elongated faces and purses, the
one wishing, in the excess of his gratitude, that he had at that moment
the shaving of the undertaker Henry, the other wishing _he_ had the
cutting of his hair. On the stairs they grumbled out, "It would be no
wonder if the dead man should not be able to rest in his grave,
but went about frightening people."
Leibgeber thought of the risk there was of losing the reward of all
this long process of deception, should anybody go to have a look at the
deceased gentleman while he was in the next room (for whenever he was
going further he locked the door). So he went to the churchyard, took a
skull out of the charnel-house, and brought it home under his coat. He
handed it to Siebenkæs, saying, "If we were to shove this head in
beneath the green trellis-bed whereon _defunctus_ is lying, and keep it
connected with his hand by means of a green-silk thread, it might be
brought into play (in the dark, at all events), as a species of
Belidor's globe of compression, or jawbone of an ass as against
Philistines, who have got to be frightened away if they come disturbing
the repose of the warm dead." To be sure (had the most extreme
necessity to do so arisen) Siebenkæs would have come to himself,
revived out of his prolonged insensibility, and repeated his apoplectic
seizure for the third time--much to the gratification of medical
systems of theory. However, the death's head was better than the fit.
The sight of this garret-lodging of a soul, this cold hatching-oven of
a spirit, made Siebenkæs sad. He said, "No doubt the wall-creeper finds
a quieter and safer nest here than did the bird-of-paradise,[92] which
has flown away from it."
Leibgeber now chaffered with the servants of the Church and School,
and (with whispered curses) paid the necessary surplice-fees and
bridge-tolls, saying, "The day after tomorrow we will lay the deceased
to rest as quietly as we may, without fuss or ceremony." It was a
matter of indifference to them; all _they_ cared about being the
pocketing of the postage which franks people into the next world,
which they were all glad enough to do--all except one old and poor
School-servant, who said he thought it a sin to take a farthing from
the poor widow, for he knew what poverty was. But this was exactly what
the rich could not know.
In the morning, Henry went down to the hairdresser and Lenette, leaving
the key in the door--for, since the recent ghost story, the lodgers who
lived upstairs were too frightened to put so much as their heads out of
their own doors. The hairdresser, who was still annoyed that he had not
been allowed to curl the deceased's hair, bethought him that it would
at least be something if he were to slip upstairs, and cut and carry
off the entire hair-forest. The demand for hair and firewood is in
excess of the supply (now that the former is made into rings and
twisted into letters), and we should never leave any dead person a
coffin or a single hair. Even the ancients sheared off the latter for
the altars of the subterranean gods; so Meerbitzer crept on tiptoe into
the room, and opened his scissor-feelers. Siebenkæs could easily look
askew into the room through the eye-holes of the mask, and from the
scissors and general aspect of his landlord, he divined the impending
misfortune and 'Rape of the Lock.' He saw that in his strait he could
reckon more upon the bare head under the bed than upon his own. The
landlord, who, in his timidity, had carefully left the door wide
open behind him to secure his retreat, drew near to the plantation of
human pot-plants, with intent to play the part of reaper in the
harvest-month--to combine the _rôles_ of beard-shearer and hair-curler,
and avenge them both. Siebenkæs wound up the thread as well as he could
upon his covered fingers, so as to roll out the skull; but as the
latter came much too slowly, and Meerbitzer far too quickly, he was
obliged to come to his own assistance in the meantime (and this because
evil spirits so often _breathe_ upon men, or _inspire_ them) by
breathing out of the mouth-hole of his mask a long night-breeze upon
the landlord. Meerbitzer could not explain to himself this most
suspicious blast, which blew real azote, and a deadly simoom-wind, upon
him; and all his warm constituent principles began to shoot into
icicles. But, unluckily, the dead man had soon shot all his breath
away, and was obliged to re-load his air-gun slowly. This suspension of
hostilities brought the lock-raper to himself, and to his legs again;
so that he made fresh preparations to take hold of the nightcap-tassel,
and remove that gossamer (said nightcap) from the field of hair. But
just as he was in the act of taking hold of it, he became aware that a
something was beginning to move under the bed; he paused, and waited
quietly (for it might be a rat) to see what this noise would turn out
to be caused by. But, as he thus waited, it was all of a sudden borne
in upon his mind that _a round thing_ was rolling up his legs, and
coming higher and higher. In one instant he made a clutch at it with
his empty hand (the other held the scissors), and, powerlessly as a
pair of callipers, that hand rested on the ascending, slippery ball,
which kept pressing it up and up. Meerbitzer grew visibly stiff in the
legs, and his blood ran cold; but a fresh upward shove of his hand, and
a glance at the ascending head, administered to him (ere he was felled
to earth, wholly curdled to cheese), such a kick of terror that he flew
like a feather across the floor, and out of the door like a cannonball
shot straight at the bull's eye by the cannon-powder of fear. He landed
in the room downstairs with the open scissors in his hand, his mouth
and eyes wide open, and a pallid spot on his face, compared to which
his hair-powder and his shirt were court-mourning. Nevertheless, in
this novel situation (I am glad to say it to his honour) he had the
presence of mind not to say a word about what had happened; partly
because ghost-stories cannot be related till nine days are over without
the greatest danger to the narrator, partly because he could not well
talk about his hair-shearing and privateering on _any_ day at all.
At one in the morning, Firmian told this tale to his friend with the
same fidelity as I have endeavoured to observe in recounting it to the
reader. This gave Leibgeber a useful hint to set a trusty body-guard
over the noble corpse; and to this office, in the absence of
chamberlains and other court officials, he could appoint no other than
Saufinder.
On the last morning, which was to give our Siebenkæs "Notice to quit,"
arrived the _casa santa_ of mankind, our _chambre garnie_, our last
_seed capsule_--the coffin for which we have to pay whatever is
demanded. "This is the last building grant of life," said Henry, "the
carpenter's final piece of cheatery."
At half an hour after midnight--when neither bat nor night-watchman,
nor beer-guest from the public-house, nor night-light was any longer to
be seen; and only a field-cricket here and there could be heard in the
sheaves, and a mouse or two in the houses--Leibgeber said to his sad
and anxious friend, "March, now! Since you shuffled off this mortal
coil, and entered into eternity, you have not known a moment of
happiness or peace. All the rest is my affair. Wait for me at Hof on
the Saale. We must see each other yet once more after death." Firmian
fell in silence on his burning face, and wept. In this twilight hour he
once more revisited all the flowery places of the past, behind which he
was sinking as into a grave. His softened heart took delight in
depositing a parting tear upon every piece of dress belonging to his
sorrowing, bereaved Lenette--on every piece of her work--on every trace
of her housewifely hand. He pressed her betrothal wreath of roses and
forget-me-nots hard to his burning bosom, and placed Nathalie's
rosebuds in his pocket. And thus--mute, oppressed, with stifled sobs,
and like one cast out by an earthquake from this earth on to the icy
coasts of a strange world--he crept down the steps after his friend;
pressed his helping hand once more at the door; and then night built
the funeral vault of her gigantic shadow all over him. Leibgeber wept
heartily as soon as he was lost to view. Tears fell on every stone
which he pocketed, and upon the old block which he took in his arms, to
imbed in the coffin-shell so as to give it the due weight of a corpse.
He filled up that haven of our bodies, and closed that ark of the
covenant, hanging the coffin-key, like a black cross, upon his breast.
And now for the first time he slept in peace in the house of mourning.
All was done.
In the morning he made no secret of it, before the bearers and Lenette,
that he had placed the body in the coffin with his own two arms, and
not without considerable effort. She sighed to see her departed husband
once again, but Henry had thrown away the door-key of the painted house
in the darkness. He helped most diligently in the search for it (he had
it about him all the time), but it was in vain, and many of the
bystanders soon guessed that Henry was only deceiving, anxious to spare
the widow's weeping eyes any further sight of the cause of her sorrow.
So they went forth, with the mock passenger in the quasi coffin, to the
churchyard which lay glistening in dew beneath the fresh blue sky. An
icy thrill crept to Henry's heart as he read the words on the
gravestone. It had been lifted from off the flat, Moravian-like grave
of Siebenkæs's great-grandfather, and turned over, and on the smooth
side glittered the newly-graven inscription--
"STAN: FIRMIAN SIEBENKÆS,
Departed this life, 24th August, 1786."
This name had once been Henry's own, and on the reverse side of the
monument was his present name, Leibgeber. Henry reflected that in a few
days _he_ would fall (with his name cast away from him) as a little
brook into the world's great ocean, and flow there without shores, and
be lost amongst strange and unknown billows. He felt as though he
himself with his old name, and his new, were going down to the grave.
So strangely mingled were his feelings that he seemed to himself as if
he were sticking fast in the frozen stream of life, while overhead a
burning sun was beating upon the ice-field, and he was lying between
the glow and the frost. In addition to this, the Schulrath just then
came running (with his handkerchief to his eyes and nose), and, in
stammering accents of sorrow, imparted the news which had just reached
the town--that the old King of Prussia had died on the 17th of the
month.
The first thing that Leibgeber did was to look up to the morning sun,
as though Frederick's eye was beaming morning fire from it over the
earth. It is easier to be a great king than a just one; it is easier to
be admired than justified. A king lays his little finger upon the long
arm of the monstrous lever, and, like Archimedes, lifts ships and
countries with the muscles of his fingers; but it is only the _machine_
that is great--and the machinist, Fate--not he who works it. The voice
of a king re-echoes like a peal of thunder amongst the numberless
valleys around him; and every gentle ray he emits is reflected in the
form of a burning beam condensed into a focus, from the countless
plane-mirrors which are upon his throne. But Frederick could, at most,
only be _lowered_ by a throne, by having to _sit_ upon it. His head
would only have been _greater_ without the close-binding crown (its
crown of thorns) and magic circle. And happy, thou great spirit,
couldst thou still less become! For, although thou hadst broken
down within thee the Bastilles and the prison-walls of all ignoble
passions--although thou hadst given thy spirit what Franklin
gave to earth, namely, lightning-conductors, musical glasses, and
freedom--although no kingdom was to thee so lovely as that of truth,
and there was none which thou so lovedst to enlarge--although thou
didst permit the emasculate philosophy of French encyclopædists to hide
from thee eternity only, but not divinity, only the _belief_ in virtue,
but not thine own--yet did thy loving bosom accept nothing from
friendship and humanity but the echoes of their sighs--the flute. And
thy spirit, which, with its great roots like the mahogany-tree, often
shivered the rocks it grew upon--thy spirit, in the fell battle of thy
wishes with thy doubts, in the contest of thy ideal world with the real
one, and the one in which thou didst believe, felt a painful discord
which no mild faith in a _second_ softened to harmony. And therefore
there was upon thy throne no place of rest but that which thou hast now
attained.
Some men bring all humanity before our eyes at a glance, as certain
events bring our whole lives. There fell upon Henry's breast strong
splinters of the fallen mountain whose crash he heard.
He placed himself before the open grave, and delivered this speech more
to invisible than to visible hearers:--
"So, then, the epitaph on the tomb is _versio interlineario_ of this
small, small printed life of ours. The heart does not rest until, like
the head, it is set in gold.[93] Thou hidden Infinite one! make, for
me, the grave a prompter's tube, and tell me what I am to think of the
whole theatre. Indeed, what _is_ there in the grave? Some ashes, a few
worms, coldness, and night--by Heaven! there is nothing better _above_
it either, except that one _feels_ it. Mr. Schulrath, Time sits behind
us, and reads the calendar of life so cursorily, and turns over the
page of month after month at such a rate, that I can fancy this
grave--this moat here about our castles in the air--this fortress
trench--lengthening out and extending till it reaches my bed, and I am
shaken out of the bedclothes into this cooking-hole, like a heap of
Spanish flies. 'Go on,' I would say, 'Go on. I shall come either to old
Fritz, or to his worms--and therewith _Basta_! 'By Heaven! one is
ashamed of life when the greatest of men no longer possess it. And so
_holla_!"