IN 1825 Schiller was pronounced past his service from infirmity and old
age; though put in guard over some other prisoners, not thought to
require equal vigilance and care. It was a trying thing to part from
him, and he felt it as well as we. Kral, a man not inferior to him in
good disposition, was at first his successor. But he too was removed,
and we had a jailer of a very harsh and distant manner, wholly devoid of
emotion, though not intrinsically bad.
I felt grieved; Schiller, Kral, and Kubitzky, but in particular the two
former, had attended us in our extreme sufferings with the affection of a
father or a brother. Though incapable of violating their trust, they
knew how to do their duty without harshness of any kind. If there were
something hard in the forms, they took the sting out of them as much as
possible by various ingenious traits and turns of a benevolent mind. I
was sometimes angry at them, but they took all I said in good part. They
wished us to feel that they had become attached to us; and they rejoiced
when we expressed as much, and approved of anything they did.
From the time Schiller left us, he was frequently ill; and we inquired
after him with a sort of filial anxiety. When he sufficiently recovered,
he was in the habit of coming to walk under our windows; we hailed him,
and he would look up with a melancholy smile, at the same time addressing
the sentinels in a voice we could overhear: “_Da sind meine Sohne_! there
are my sons.”
Poor old man! how sorry I was to see him almost staggering along, with
the weight of increasing infirmities, so near us, and without being
enabled to offer him even my arm.
Sometimes he would sit down upon the grass, and read. They were the same
books he had often lent me. To please me, he would repeat the titles to
the sentinels, or recite some extract from them, and then look up at me,
and nod. After several attacks of apoplexy, he was conveyed to the
military hospital, where in a brief period he died. He left some
hundreds of florins, the fruit of long savings. These he had already
lent, indeed, to such of his old military comrades as most required them;
and when he found his end approaching, he called them all to his bedside,
and said: “I have no relations left; I wish each of you to keep what I
have lent you, for my sake. I only ask that you will pray for me.”
One of these friends had a daughter of about eighteen, and who was
Schiller’s god-daughter. A few hours before his death, the good old man
sent for her. He could not speak distinctly, but he took a silver ring
from his finger, and placed it upon hers. He then kissed her, and shed
tears over her. The poor girl sobbed as if her heart would break, for
she was tenderly attached to him. He took a handkerchief, and, as if
trying to soothe her, he dried her eyes. Lastly, he took hold of her
hands, and placed them upon his eyes; and those eyes were closed for
ever.