CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 PT 2332.K92 1884 
 
 Last days of Heinrich Heine. 
 
 3 1924 026 213 961 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026213961 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 CAMILLE I.ELDEN. 
 
 TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARE BRUNE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 REMINGTON & CO, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 1 8, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 .A1884. 
 s 
 

 PRINTED BY 
 
 John Avery & Co., 
 
 ABERDEEN. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 BECAME acquainted with Heinrich Heine 
 towards the close of his life. His poems 
 and writings were familiar to me many years 
 previous to my meeting him for the first time 
 face to face. 
 
 " I arrived from Vienna, bringing with me a 
 small parcel, containing a few sheets of music 
 sent by one of his admirers. 
 
 " To ensure safe delivery, I carried it myself to 
 his abode, and, after handing it to the servant, 
 was turning away, when a sharp ring resounded 
 from the adjoining room. The domestic answered 
 it, and I was startled by hearing a somewhat 
 imperious voice forbidding my departure. A door 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 opened and I entered a very dark room, where I 
 stumbled against a screen covered with coloured 
 paper in imitation of lacker. Behind this screen 
 a man, sick and half blind, lay stretched upon a 
 low couch ; though no longer young, he still 
 appeared so, and his face bore traces of former 
 beauty;' Imagine, if you can, the smile of Mephi- 
 stopheles passing over the face of Christ — Christ 
 draining the dregs of the chalice. The invalid 
 raised himself on his pillows and held out his 
 hand, saying it gratified him to converse with 
 anybody arriving from ' yonder.' A sigh accom- 
 panied this touching ' yonder,' which was breathed 
 from his lips, like the echo of a distant and well- 
 known melody. Friendship progresses rapidly 
 when begun beside a sick couch and in the 
 proximity of death. When I left, he gave me a 
 book and begged me to visit him again. I 
 
PREFACE. Ill 
 
 thought it was a mere polite formula, and kept 
 away, fearing to disturb the invalid. He wrote 
 me a scolding letter. The reproof both touched 
 and flattered me, and my visits henceforth ceased 
 only on the sad February morning when we 
 accompanied him to his last home ! " 
 
 The above few lines, whilst explaining how I 
 first knew Heinrich Heine, serve as an introduction 
 to a sketch depicting the last days of his life. When 
 more than fifteen years ago this fragment appeared 
 in the "Revue Nationale," I did not intend using 
 the manuscripts, the translation of which forms 
 the principal interest of this book. Youth has 
 its reservations and egoisms, which middle-age 
 condemns. Now that time and circumstances 
 have modified my ideas and cancelled my scruples, 
 I consider that I no longer possess any right 
 to withhold certain writings, which, although 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 addressed to me, form none the less part of 
 Heinrich Heine's works, and may, by completing 
 the story of his life, increase the poet's fame. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 s^-e-!! 
 
 ^HETHER it arose from a disregard of 
 mere outward show, or rather from 
 poverty overshadowing the household and neces- 
 sitating strict economy, I know not ; but certain 
 it was, that at a period of "curios," when every 
 artist arranged his home with due regard to 
 comfort, if not to elegance, the poet's dwelling 
 resembled third-rate furnished lodgings. Not a 
 trace of good taste, no attempt even at comfort — 
 a medley of furniture and articles recalling the 
 barbarous fancy of that degenerate epoch when 
 
 B 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 mahogany was in vogue, and white-wood was 
 relegated to the lumber-room. 
 
 When I first saw Heinrich Heine, he lived 
 on the fifth floor of a house situated in the 
 Avenue Matignon, not far from the Rond-Point 
 of the Champs Elys^es. His windows, overlooking 
 the Avenue, opened . on to a narrow balcony, 
 covered in hot weather with a striped linen 
 awning, such as appear in front of small cafh. 
 The apartments consisted of three or four rooms 
 — the dining-room and two rooms used by the 
 master and the mistress of the house. A very 
 low couch, behind a screen encased in wall-paper, 
 several chairs, and opposite the door a walnut- 
 wood secretary, formed the entire furniture of the 
 invalid's chamber. I nearly forgot to mention , 
 two framed engravings, dating from the early years 
 of Louis Philippe's reign — the " Reapers " and the 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 "Fisherman," after Leopold Robert. So far the 
 arrangements of the rooms evidenced no trace of 
 a woman's presence, which showed itself in the 
 adjoining chamber by a display of imitation lace, 
 lined with transparent yellow muslin, and corner- 
 cupboards covered with brown velvet, and more 
 especially by a full-length . portrait, placed in a 
 good light, of Mrs. Heine, with dress and hair as 
 worn in her youth — a low-necked black bodice, 
 and bands of hair plastered down her cheeks — a 
 style in the fashion of about 1840. 
 
 II. 
 
 ^^^HE by no means realised my ideal Mrs. 
 ^^&|! Heine. I had fancied her refined, elegant, 
 languishing, with a pale, earnest face, animated 
 by large, perfidious velvety eyes. I saw, instead, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 a homely, dark stout lady, with a high colour, 
 and a jovial countenance, a person of whom you 
 would say she required plenty of exercise in the 
 open air. What a painful contrast between this 
 robust woman and the pale dying man, who, 
 with one foot already in the grave, summoned 
 sufficient energy to earn not only enough for the 
 daily bread, but money besides to purchase 
 beautiful dresses. The melancholy jests, which 
 obliging biographers constantly represent as flashes 
 of wit from a husband too much in love, not to 
 be profuse, never deluded anybody who visited 
 that home. It is absurd to transform Mrs. Heine 
 into an idyllic character, whilst the poet himself 
 never dreamed of representing her in that guise, 
 Why poetise at the expense of truth ? especially 
 when truth brings more honour to the poet's 
 memory. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 III. 
 
 |HATEVER may have been said to the 
 contrary, he never showed himself 
 selfish to any one. He was not to be believed 
 when, assuming a Mephistophelian character, he 
 broke forth into abuse of love and virtue. His 
 mind, which people are pleased, and sometimes 
 with truth, to decsribe as depraved, often revealed 
 a refinement of feeling unknown to any poets 
 deemed virtuous, and I doubt if even Schiller 
 wrote anything more touching than the eight 
 following lines — 
 
 "Emblem of a lovely flower, 
 
 So fair, so pure, so graceful art thou ! 
 Silent I gaze and own thy power. 
 
 Thy presence brings me sadness now, 
 I feel the need to spread my hands 
 
 And o'er thy head a blessing call 
 From heaven, which eternal stands, 
 
 And shields the pure from sudden fall." 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 One can well understand the author of the 
 above, whilst suffering agony, composing merry 
 letters to comfort his infirm and aged mother; 
 but one can also believe him capable of bitter 
 raillery against those who, whilst pretending to 
 like him, sought only to ira^t)^e upon him. 
 The following trait describes the degree of dis- 
 interestedness he attributed to servants supposed to 
 be faithful. It happened about New-year's day 
 that I praised the assiduous attentions of Catherine, 
 one of the two servants, who acted as his nurse, 
 and never left off the ^" serre-tete'" with which 
 she probably sat as the model of "Dame Mis- 
 fortune " — 
 
 "You forget," said Heine, "that this is New- 
 year's week — that means the season of gratitude 
 
 1 A bandana handkerchief tied round the head and fastenei 
 with a knot. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 Three days before and three days after the first 
 of January. Sum-total, six days' consideration. 
 Now do not run away with the idea that every 
 servant is brutal and incapable of good feeling!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^I^^ESIDES Catherine, the nurse with the 
 ^^^ " serre-tite" there was lame Pauline, a 
 kind of friend, who filled the offices of com- 
 panion and lady's maid; in fact, acted as a maid 
 of all work. The intimates of the family — I will 
 not say the "rest of the domesticity" — consisted 
 of a secretary, a Saxon of good family, who had 
 been implicated in the political events of 1849, 
 and an old half-paralysed Jew who called himself 
 Doctor Loeueve, living on the poet's bounty, and 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 entrusted by him with the management of th( 
 small system of secret police which he fanciec 
 he was bound to maintain. 
 
 The unremunerated visitors were nearly all ol 
 the same stamp — relics of the past, waifs oi 
 politics or love, members of that somewhat 
 shady society which Heine wittily styled " Lt 
 demi-monde princier." The Princess Belgiojoso 
 just returned from Broussa, visited the peel 
 occasionally to complain of her sufferings from a 
 ruined digestion which obliged her to partake 
 only of iced food at midnight ; the Princess 
 
 W , another wreck, from Weimar, redolent 
 
 of tobacco, arrived, her hands full of small 
 pamphlets in praise of the god of her adoration, 
 who allowed her to have her own way. 
 
 I remember meeting besides, in that house 
 two women of the same time and the same set 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 one of whom, an Englishwoman, Heine pointed 
 out to me as the original of " Lady Matilda " in 
 the " Reisebilder" and also the famous "God- 
 mother '' of " U enfant du siecle]' the chosen 
 confidant of the lovers in her social circle, tiny 
 Madame Jaubert, a diminutive woman, neat, well- 
 gloved, and carrying a little umbrella which 
 became in her small fingers an insignia, and 
 made her resemble the symbol of " Genteel 
 Comedy" under Louis Philippe. 
 
 V. 
 
 DWELLING, as well as its visitors, 
 always bears an original and significant 
 stamp. For me, all the poet's youth was 
 mirrored in the wretchedness of his last days. 
 
lO THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 They betrayed traces of an .unhealthy past, 
 and a certain indescribable aroma of format 
 Bohemianism, which recalled, at the same time, 
 the laughter of grisettes and the exploits of 
 pianists. Montmorency and the Conservatoire, 
 the Gothic prie-dieu of the Princess Belgiojoso, 
 and the policeman charged with moderating the 
 antics of the fantastic ballet-dancers, whose 
 leaders were called '^ Rose Pompon'' and the 
 " Queen Pomarif.'' 
 
 There is no doubt that the Bohemian often 
 appears in the artist, but if the latter means to 
 succeed in life, he ought to know how to assume 
 and to abandon at will the role of the former. 
 He ought especially to understand how to leave 
 it at the door, when he comes home. 
 
 Customs are changed since Heine's time, 
 and nobody knows better than the artists 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. II 
 
 of to-day how to assume the airs of respec- 
 tability. 
 
 Probably Heine never knew the meaning we 
 give to that word, and whatever they may say to 
 the contrary, he remained quite ingenuously 
 German, beneath the Voltairian disguise the 
 French choose to ascribe to him. Not only had 
 he fallen into all the sentimental absurdities of 
 Louis Philippe's reign, but he even exaggerated 
 them. 
 
 In spite of his objection to Musset, he at first 
 took the character of "Jenny I'ouvriere" in 
 earnest, he humbled himself before some titled 
 humbug, confused great passions with small 
 dissipations, and gave proof of his mistakes in 
 some letters in which, believing he was sketching 
 a spirited caricature, he painted a genre picture, 
 which brings before us a man, already famous. 
 
12 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 busy writing copy beside a woman mending 
 shirts. 
 
 I have unfortunately every reason to believe 
 that the poet had grown wiser when chance 
 brought us together. 
 
 My somewhat cosmopolitan education and 
 much travel had prepared me for this meeting. 
 
 Heine's poems formed the favourite study of 
 my youth. I read his works in choice tomes 
 given me by my mother. Thanks to Heinrich 
 Heine's splendid descriptions, Nature seemed 
 transformed for me into a terrestrial Paradise. 
 
 The poet's roughness did not alarm me. I 
 liked him all the better for being decried. I 
 felt, whilst defending him, that I was, in a 
 way, defending myself; and, whilst entering the 
 lists for my favourite poet, I prepared my own 
 defence for the day, when I, like him, should 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 1 3 
 
 have to strive against the wickedness and folly 
 of the world. 
 
 My profound admiration for the author of the 
 "Book of Songs" could not fail to render him 
 congenial to me, and, if I am not mistaken, he 
 loved me especially on account of a certain 
 similarity which he fancied to exist between us. 
 
 The horror of routine, of ugliness, of vulgarity, 
 the hatred of expediency, the contempt for 
 bombast, as well as for empty sentiments and 
 phrases, before, and above all, an exceeding love 
 of imagination, a fanatical adoration of the 
 beautiful had revealed to him, in me, proofs of an 
 independent spirit. He was pleased with me for 
 not being common-place, and delighted in telling 
 me so. 
 
 "Our minds," said he, "are akin, and that is 
 why I need conceal nothing from you ! " 
 
14 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 VI. 
 
 ^HE first letter he wrote to me proves 
 that, from the beginning of our acquaint- 
 ance, perfect confidence existed between Heinrich 
 Heine and myself. 
 
 "Very Charming and Amiable Lady, 
 
 " I much regret seeing so little of you 
 the other day. You made a most favourable 
 impression upon me, and I feel a great desire to 
 meet you again. Come to-morrow, if possible, at 
 all events, as soon as you can. I am ready to 
 receive you at any time. But I should prefer 
 after four o'clock, until ... as late as you please. 
 I write to you myself, in spite of my weak eyes, 
 because I have no private secretary just now. I 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 1 5 
 
 am beset by many painful reports, and am still 
 very ill. I know not why your warm sympathy 
 does me so much good, superstitious being that 
 I am ! I fancy that a good fairy has visited me 
 in the hour of affliction. But if the fairy is 
 good, the hour must be propitious ! Or are you 
 perchance a wicked fairy? I intend speedily to 
 verify the matter. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "Heinrich Heine." 
 
 He submitted to the influence that one dis- 
 cerning mind exercises over another. As he 
 said himself, I had come to him "opportunely 
 in fact, just when I was needed." How often 
 affections are nipped in the bud, because people 
 fail to seize the right moment. When after the 
 lapse of so many years, and the formation of 
 
1 6 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 many new friendships, I try to recall the incidents 
 of the time Heinrich Heine and I spent together, 
 I remember especially a great mutual affection; 
 also, an intellectual sympathy, which always re- 
 mained the same, and was never debased by the 
 admixture of any common-place sentiment. Not 
 a shadow of conceit or vanity on either side. 
 Having formed our opinion, one of the other, on 
 the spot, all was settled, excused, and forgiven 
 beforehand. No possible misunderstanding could 
 arise ; we showed ourselves sincere, without fear of 
 seeming false, which added much to the charm 
 of our mutual intercourse, and gave it a some- 
 thing, refined, and sui generis, which impressed 
 the most casual observers, and inspired respect 
 to all. 
 
 He said "iu" (thou) to me from the first, 
 which made me feel as if I had always known 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 1/ 
 
 him. He treated me like a relative ; therefore I 
 
 tried to assume that part towards him. 
 
 The absence of his secretary, Mr. de Zichlinsky, 
 
 who fell ill, and had no successor, enabled me 
 
 to give a useful purpose to my visits. Heine 
 
 liked to make use of what he called the little 
 
 talents of his "Fly." He gave me this nickname 
 
 in reference to the device on my seal. But to 
 
 return to my duties as secretary ad interim! 
 
 Sometimes he gave me to address the letters he 
 
 wrote to his mother, "the poor old woman," 
 
 sometimes I corrected the proofs of the French 
 
 edition of the " Reisebilder." A laborious task, 
 
 for I was a novice at literary work, and I had to 
 
 rectify a text, interlarded with barbarisms and 
 
 impossible phrases. At other times, Heine 
 
 availed himself of my knowledge of German to 
 
 dictate letters which he found painful to write 
 
 c 
 
l8 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 himself, and I do not think I am betraying con- 
 fidence by alluding to one of them, which I am 
 sure the Rothschild family preserves in its 
 archives. I mean an epistle written after the 
 death of its chief, and which, under the form of 
 condolence, contains a grand and touching 
 description of the Jewish mourning. It was in 
 reference to that particular letter penned by me, 
 of which Heine considered the caligraphy im- 
 perfect, that he calls himself the "Schoolmaster," 
 a term recurring in various notes, he wrote 
 to me : — 
 
 "No school to-day, for the schoolmaster 
 is not yet cure — (bad French) cured — as says old 
 Mme. Liszt. Therefore I must dispense with 
 you. But pray let me know if you can come 
 to-morrow (Monday). My head aches, and it 
 
 -1 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. I9 
 
 would be selfish to let you call without being 
 able to talk to you. 
 
 "Awaiting your reply, 
 
 "I remain, dear Fly, 
 
 "Your most doting, 
 
 "H. H." 
 
 He seemed especially disgusted at the 
 incorrect shape of my capitals, and I fancy I 
 can still see " I' enfant terrible" of poetry, the 
 pitiless banterer, raising with one finger his 
 paralysed eyelid, the better to discern the faults 
 of my writing, and to trace a copy for me. He 
 treated leniently that kind of failing, but 
 bunglers rarely, if ever, escaped his wrath, and I 
 heard him once discharge a volley of bitter 
 raillery against a silly friend of his in Germany, 
 who, wishing to appear literary, had conceived 
 
20 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 the mistaken idea of interlarding his letter to 
 the poet, with quotations from Schiller. 
 
 Schiller, in an epistle to Heinrich Heine; 
 and, moreover, in a, business letter ! He could 
 not forget it, and expressed his displeasure by 
 one of those sallies frequent with him. 
 
 "That's good, as if he fancied that I care 
 for Schiller " 1 he cried indignantly. His smile 
 completed the meaning of his exclamation. He 
 evidently alluded to that stock of incorrigible 
 silliness which adheres like a hereditary curse to 
 the Philistine of every rank in all countries. For 
 my part, I discovered spite where Heine only 
 perceived stupidity. The fascinating artist, the 
 discerning critic, who could not forgive his 
 fellow-countryman for treating him so incon- 
 siderately, forgot that people never raise statues 
 to those who call them stupid and "bourgeoisr 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 21 
 
 vir. 
 
 ilD he want to know how I should tide 
 over a difficulty, and convince himself 
 that my mind continued to harmonise with his 
 own ? Whether prompted by mere curiosity, or 
 by a desire to associate me with him in all his 
 work, he talked to me fully about his intended 
 translations. The point in question was to find 
 melodious and appropriate expressions in French 
 to initiate the readers of the "Revue des deux 
 Mondes" in a masterpiece which, under the title 
 of " New Spring," describes so exactly the feel- 
 ings of a heart passing from the coldness of a 
 worn-out love, to the fresh delights of a new 
 one. He wished, he said, to compare my French 
 version with that of his usual translators, and to 
 correct their work by mine. I then attached so 
 
22 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 little importance to my ideas that, by some 
 strange oversight, I never thought of procuring 
 the number of the " Revue des deux Mondes " con- 
 taining that fragment of my first literary effort. 
 I was perfectly contented with having helped my 
 friend ; I wished for no more. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Whenever I read aloud to him, he 
 made many interesting remarks. My 
 style of reading German pleased him, for he 
 considered it unaffected, simple, and well suited 
 to the genius of a language which, of all others, 
 he deemed not only the most beautiful, but also 
 the most melodious. He thought French more 
 terse than elegant, therefore unsuited to poetry, 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 23 
 
 and quite incapable of expressing certain inner- 
 most feelings. We all know his dislike to Victor 
 Hugo, and Alfred de Musset pleased him no 
 better. " It is prose in rhyme," he exclaimed 
 one day, when I thought to gratify him by 
 reading " MardocM." 
 
 Though he failed to admire our poets, he at 
 least delighted in our novelists, beginning with 
 Alexandre Dumas the elder, whose animation, 
 mirth, and marvellous imagination he praised 
 incessantly. How often he quoted the " Trois 
 Mousquetaires " as a model of the style of writing 
 intended to refresh and divert the mind ! 
 Amongst those modern writers who, according 
 to him, excelled in the art of amusing and 
 attracting the reader, he frequently cited an 
 author forgotten at the present day — I mean 
 Charles Rabou, and his novel, " Le pauvre de 
 
24 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Montlery." The novels called "philosophical" 
 pleased him less, and without denying George 
 Sand's wonderful talent, Heine never expressed 
 much enthusiasm for her. Quite unlike most of 
 her admirers, who declare her to possess a 
 masculine style and a manly spirit, he dwelt 
 at length on the eminently feminine bent of her 
 thoughts, and consequently of her writings. The 
 philosophical mind which the great-grand-daughter 
 ■of Aurora de Konigsmark probably inherited from 
 her German origin, failed, in Heine's opinion, to 
 rectify those weaknesses of a judgment in which 
 he discovered all a woman's waywardness. 
 According to Heine, the diffuseness of her 
 speeches, the magniloquence of her arguments, 
 and, above all, the sameness of her subjects and 
 the unreality of her characters, constantly revealed 
 the sex of the writer in George Sand. He did 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 2$ 
 
 not admire her mind in the abstract ; he re- 
 proached her with a fault common to most lady- 
 novelists — the impossibilitj'^ of separating the 
 woman from the artist, in other words, of re- 
 maining neutral in her works. He also blamed 
 that want of judgment which impels George 
 Sand, like several of her predecessors, to justify 
 her principles by her writings, or rather to trans- 
 form her principles into personages. To sum up 
 his opinion about her, he did not fear to apply 
 the term blue stocking, and when I exclaimed 
 against it, he added, " Let us say red stocking ! " 
 Every superior mind becomes despotic, and the 
 reader must not be surprised if the artist, the 
 poet who formulated the most splendid descrip- 
 tions in the simplest words, could not admire 
 writings composed of high-flown eloquence. Be- 
 sides, Heine was too clever to believe in novels 
 
26 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 intended to reform society. He considered it the 
 specialty of a true artist, whether novelist, poet, 
 or dramatic author, to produce poetry by copying 
 nature. 
 
 After alj, nothing more could be expected of 
 him ; the first to solve this magnificent problem 
 was Shakespeare. Of him, Heine always spoke 
 with the greatest admiration. 
 
 " See," he used to say, " God holds by right 
 the first place, but the second undoubtedly 
 belongs to Shakespeare ! " 
 
 IX. 
 
 lEADING aloud to invahds wearies them. 
 ^Ip Sometimes he begged me to stop. He 
 then put out his arm, and with his eyes almost 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 2/ 
 
 closed he asked me to place my hand in his. 
 For him, he said, it was a means of becoming 
 again linked to that life which was slipping away 
 from him. Whilst thus speaking, the sound of 
 his voice grew strangely eager, and his fingers 
 entwined round mine, which he pressed as if it 
 lay in my power to keep him in this world. 
 In the hope of making him forget such painful 
 thoughts, I tried to lead him back to the past, 
 and endeavoured to induce him to relate some 
 details of his student life, or one of those anec- 
 dotes reflecting so truly the narrator's mind. 
 The style in which he entertained me about his 
 sojourn at Bonn, recalled Goethe's immortal 
 volume, " Wilhelm Meistet's Lehrjahrer What 
 vivacity in the descriptions of this other Wilhelm 
 Meister! What flashes of satire leaped forth 
 when he sought to introduce me into the midst 
 
28 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 of those " Burschenschaften " to which he had 
 belonged ! I mentioned the '•' Lehrjahre" but it is 
 rather in the middle ages, in certain pages of 
 Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" that we 
 must seek for pictures analogous to those which 
 Heine described to me. The students that 
 figured in those sketches reminded me of the 
 agitated, yet pedantic world of scholars in olden 
 times. No great passions, but many petty love 
 affairs, many hours wasted in drinking, in idle 
 discussions ; jests, more or less good, upon all 
 existent and non-existent subjects ; no great desire 
 to acquire knowledge. On the other hand, broken 
 glasses, hiccoughs, duels, brawls, and perhaps 
 even sighs. In fact, every conceivable and incon- 
 ceivable folly, all the absurdities that arise in a 
 student's mind, one of those students of true 
 Teutonic race, who, under pretext of seeking the 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 29 
 
 explanation of things and of examining them- 
 selves, spend their days in dreaming, their nights 
 in feasting, and finally advance towards the 
 " Unknown " which disturbs their convictions and 
 confuses their calculations, stopping meanwhile at 
 every house where love or beer is retailed. 
 
 At the period of which Heine spoke, politics, 
 by which the public-house keepers throve, excited 
 the minds of the middle-class students. They 
 organised pic-nics . and marched in troops, singing 
 patriotic songs, to one of the ruins overlooking 
 the Rhine. There, dominating the ancient river, 
 where the luscious vineyards extend right and 
 left, and in the shade of dungeons where the 
 buzzard succeeds the " Burg-graf" of former 
 days, they indulged in harmless manifestations 
 against despotic tyranny. The empty provision- 
 hamper was the signal for speeches to commence. 
 
30 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 but very often the faltering tongue of the orator 
 vainly sought for rousing expressions. He got 
 through it as well as he could. One day, for 
 instance, when the cloth being laid on the 
 " Drackenfels," in the shelter of an old tower 
 once the lair of a titled rascal, a guest, feeling 
 his tongue very thick, proposed, instead of a 
 speech, to make a bonfire of the dungeon. The 
 suggestion was received with frantic acclama- 
 tions, and after deciding that " union is strength," 
 and also that the "maintaining of the rights of 
 man implies certain ideas of superiority and 
 manliness irresistible to the weaker sex," they 
 proceeded to set the improvised pyre' alight with 
 their torches. The tower soon blazed away 
 merrily, but the authorities, who never had a 
 crow to pick with despots, and could not under- 
 stand the object of destroying a picturesque ruin, 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 3 1 
 
 considered the joke a bad one. The students felt 
 compelled to renounce any further bonfires, and 
 of all that story in which the poet played a part, 
 he kept ' especially in mind a severe attack of 
 bronchitis which cured him for ever of all desire 
 to share in popular demonstrations. 
 
 Another scene witnessed by Heinrich Heine 
 described perhaps still better the outrageously 
 bad manners of the style of person who spends 
 his life seated at table in pot-houses, and takes 
 a pride in his folly until he can boast of his 
 learning. It occurred at M. de Savigny's, Pro- 
 fessor of Jurisprudence and a celebrated lawyer. 
 The student in question, who came, according to 
 custom in German Universities, to enter his name 
 for the Professor's lectures, appeared in his dress- 
 ing-gown, his cap over one ear, and exhaling an 
 odour of tobacco from a pipe, of which the long 
 
32 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 stem, adorned with a tassel, peeped out of a 
 greasy pocket. He entered simpering, but one 
 look of M. de Savigny's stopped him at the door. 
 " Does that dressing-gown form your entire ward- 
 robe?" asked the Professor severely. The mala- 
 pert, in a rage, brazened it out, and answered 
 that not only did he possess other garments, but 
 a perfectly new coat besides. A significant 
 gesture of M. de Savigny's cut this enumeration 
 short. "Well then, go home and dress yourself, 
 and then come and speak to me ! " 
 
 X. 
 
 |HE doctor having ordered me to take the 
 waters at Wildbad, in the Black Forest, 
 I was obliged to interrupt my visits for a time. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 33 
 
 The prospect of this separation distressed the 
 invalid. I was abandoning him, and for Germany. 
 Alas! to be able to accompany me and to do 
 as he liked for a last time, to seek in vain for 
 some one to exclaim, "Arise and walk!" 
 
 With his head on his pillows, he seemed to 
 be dreaming. 
 
 I fancied he saw the Black Forest penetrated 
 with the summer heat, on the high mountain, 
 the sun-clad fir plantation, the solemn avenue of 
 trees, the blue sky behind the shady domes, the 
 feathery ferns waving above the yellow mosses, 
 the undulating shadows of the grasses ; then, lower 
 down, under an azure canopy, the unalterable 
 freshness of an idyllic landscape, rustic cottages 
 sparkling light upon the babbling wavelets, 
 flowers opening beneath a glittering dust, the 
 wild ravine illumined by a ray of sunshine. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Heine remained silent ; I was mutely gazing 
 at the motes dancing in the air. The oppressive 
 heat entered through the open window; in the 
 next room two quarrelsome voices were raised in 
 dispute. A deep sigh escaped the patient. Tears 
 filled my eyes, and I deemed it egotistical on 
 my part to care for my health, when he had so 
 short a time to live. 
 
 XI. 
 
 IENTLEST of ^ 'fines mouches ! ' Or rather, 
 II putting aside the emblem on your seal, 
 ought I not to name you after the perfume of 
 
 1 Evidently a pun on the expression "fine mouche," slyboots, 
 and the device on her seal. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 35 
 
 your letter. In that case, I must say, the most 
 graceful of ' musk-cats, I received your missive the 
 day before yesterday and the 'pattes de mouches' 
 keep running in my head, perhaps even in my 
 heart. My most grateful thanks for all the 
 affection you show me. The translation of the 
 poems is very fine, and I repeat what I said 
 before you left. I rejoice also, at the thought of 
 beholding you soon again, and of placing ^' une 
 empreinte vivante' on the sweet and slightly suabian 
 features. Ah! that sentence would bear a less 
 platonic meaning if I were still a man ! But I 
 am only a spirit now, a fact which may suit you 
 but scarcely satisfies me! The French edition 
 
 ^ Also a pun, " Chatte Musquge, '' meaning a dainty, charming, 
 woman, as well as a, musk-cat. 
 
 ^ "A living impress." These words which recur often in 
 Heine's letters to me, are meant in allusion to an expression I 
 once used, and are written in French in the original text. 
 
36 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 of my poems has just come out, and is all 
 the rage ; but the poems hitherto unpub- 
 lished, for instance, 'The Return of Spring,' 
 will appear in two or three months' time, 
 in one of the last volumes of the French 
 edition. You will perceive that no time has 
 been lost. 
 
 "Yes! I shall be delighted to see you again, 
 my well-beloved ^fine mouche' of my soul. The 
 most graceful of ^ chats musqu^s,' as gentle as an 
 angora cat, the kind I always preferred. For 
 some time I loved tiger-cats, but they are too 
 dangerous, and the living impress they sometimes 
 left on my face was unpleasant. I am still very 
 ill, constant annoyances and fits of passion 
 rage against my state of health, which is 
 hopeless. A dying man, thirsting for the wildest 
 joys that life can offer. It is dreadful ! Fare- 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 37 
 
 well! May the waters strengthen and do you 
 good. 
 
 "Most affectionate greeting from your friend, 
 
 "H. H." 
 
 "Paris, /m/j' 20th, 1855. 
 '"My dear Friend, 
 
 "You are in Paris, and yet you delay 
 coming to shake hands with me. I long to 
 inhale the musk of your gloves, to hear the 
 sound of your voice, to make a living impression 
 on your ^ Suabian face. Do not be angry, 
 although so graceful you have a Suabian 
 ' Gelbveiglein.' Come soon. 
 
 "Yours ever, 
 
 "H. Heine. 
 
 ^ This letter was written originally in French. 
 
 * Suabian face, a German idiomatic expression for a good- 
 natured face. 
 
38 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 He always accentuated the final letter of his 
 name when writing it in French. 
 
 XII. 
 
 nT is easy to discover by the preceding pages, 
 as well as by the ' letters he forwarded to 
 me at Wildbad and the note awaiting my return 
 to Paris, a certainty that his mind was then 
 tolerably calm. He seemed pleased at the 
 publication of his poems and " Reisebilder" in 
 French. 
 
 The improvement caused by the introduction 
 of what is called the realistic into literature, has 
 made us exacting with regard to composition, 
 and we scarcely approve of those desultory works 
 where the author, relying upon the proverbial 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 39 
 
 good-nature of the reader, takes him right and 
 left, without knowing where he will land him, 
 not even when the beauty of the excursion 
 justifies its length. 
 
 The personal impressions of a writer such as 
 the author of the " Reisebilder" excels in 
 describing have become almost obsolete at the 
 present day. Disconnected as it is, composed of 
 fragments resembling in form the fly-leaves of an 
 album, still the book will always be considered 
 one of Heinrich Heine's best works. Here, 
 contrary to his custom, and as in one of his most 
 beautiful poems, you perceive that the author is 
 unconstrained, that he writes to please himself, 
 without caring for praise or censure, you feel that 
 his troubles are forgotten in the intense pleasure 
 of escaping from close connection with human 
 folly and of avoiding the contemptible society of 
 
40 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 people reputed proper to inhale freely the 
 mountain air. What sensations of pure joy, of 
 freedom, what indulgence in voluptuousness, 
 appear in these scenes full of air and of space, 
 where the poet, painter, and great artist, sketches 
 in turn the picturesque summits upon which 
 Goethe placed his saturnalia, and the pathetically 
 calm landscapes of beautiful southern climes. 
 Certainly few artists and writers, I will not say 
 saw less, but travelled less than Heine. A single 
 trip to London, one sea-voyage, an expedition to 
 the Hartz Mountains, an attempted journey to 
 Italy, one season at Bagn^res in the Pyrenees, 
 form pretty nearly the entire basis of his resources 
 as a describer of scenery. But which of our 
 brilliant writers of modern times has succeeded 
 in describing better or so vividly the physiognomy 
 and the colouring of a landscape ? Let us take 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 4I 
 
 for instance his pages on Italy, a country about 
 which endless nonsense and lies have been 
 written. Travellers and literary men, filled with 
 an exaggerated idea of their own superiority, who 
 pass six weeks in Italy, with the object of 
 bringing out a book, generally possess the 
 prejudices of the foreigner who is annoyed at 
 failing to meet elsewhere with what pleases him 
 at home. Thus the Innkeeper, determined to 
 regulate the amount of his bill according to the 
 manners of his guest, the little Italian girl 
 who yields without any previous hypocritical 
 coyness, are transformed by the pen of the 
 said travellers into types of baseness and mean- 
 ness. In like manner, they only see a low- 
 class comedian in the little half- naked beggar 
 who dances on the Chiaja at Naples, and in 
 the pretty Monsignor, who covered with lace 
 
42 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 enhances the pomp of the great religious cere- 
 monies. 
 
 They do not examine, they merely draw 
 comparisons, without allowing for the differences 
 of temperament, of climate, of education, and of 
 character ; they ridicule manners and customs, 
 because they differ from those of their native 
 land. The mean curiosity of authors who travel 
 for the sake of making money at the expense of 
 a nation which they affect to despise frequently 
 results in erroneous descriptions. Many of these 
 accounts treat of the museums, besides the 
 treasures and antiquities, which enrich Italy, 
 without revealing her idiosyncracies. These 
 people seem to ignore that a work of art is after 
 all of little account if they possess not the secret 
 of the sentiment that created it. This sentiment 
 is revealed in every page of the " Reisebilder!' 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 43 
 
 Setting aside all consideration of the greater or 
 less value of the plan of the work, the "Reise- 
 bilder" is a chef-d'czuvre, and until now, the only 
 book capable of giving the delicious vision of 
 that terrestial paradise of which Goethe's 
 " Mignon" deserves to be called the "Eve." 
 What a difference however between the ancient 
 and classical Italy of the great German classic 
 writer and the young and smiling Italy of the 
 Jewish poet ! 
 
 The powerful poetical imagination of the Son 
 of Israel creates personages suited to the 
 character of the landscape. Italy, in his 
 pictures, is no longer a vast and mag- 
 nificent cemetery, where cypress trees over- 
 shadow the marbles, but a fairy-garden, an 
 enchanted land, where a priestess, under the 
 form of the most beautiful of dancers, cele- 
 
44 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 brates continuously the eternal festival of Youth 
 and Love. 
 
 Goethe, when describing Italy in his "Roman 
 Elegies," carves a noble bas-relief; Byron and 
 Lamartine take up their lyres to compose a 
 hymn. Heine grasps not the chisel, nor does he 
 touch the lyre in honour of the countrj' he loves, 
 but in prose alone he limns a wonderful picture, 
 and so beautiful is it, that we are tempted to 
 doubt whether the original equals his description. 
 Let others lead their readers amidst rows of 
 paintings and statues, Henrich Heine calls up 
 living images of Dante's birth-place. The 
 convent containing religious frescoes descriptive 
 of holy miracles, the shady fir trees on the 
 heights of Fiesole, where the tourist pauses to 
 contemplate Florence peacefully basking under 
 the azure sky, the narrow horizon of the hills, 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 45 
 
 which, like certain back-grounds in favour with 
 the ^"primitifs," is framed in the ogive arch of 
 a cloister gilded by the setting sun, the painted 
 loggia of the palace, where in the evening is 
 heard the laughter of pale, beautiful women, the 
 holy Madonna with her shining halo, causing the 
 passer-by to dream of a virgin's love ; the 
 deserted gardens where marbles intermingled 
 with the laurels and myrtles reproduce mytho- 
 logical scenes, the calm night illumined by the 
 flitting of the fire-flies amidst the foliage of the 
 lemon trees, the noisy darkness filled with masked 
 figures, the emblazoned sanctuary where prayer 
 assumes passionate and amorous formulas ; 
 all this assemblage of animated and living 
 objects which form the picture of a beautiful 
 
 ^ A French school existing in Heine's day, corresponding to 
 our pre-Raphaelites. 
 
46 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 country and the soul of a brilliant nation pass 
 before us in the few immortal pages which the 
 poet devotes to Italy in his " Reisebilder." To 
 make his description more complete, he has 
 drawn the reverse of the medal and placed 
 caricature beside the likeness. The heavy Jewish 
 financier, who, wishing to appear well read, 
 quotes poetry on the setting sun when it is 
 rising, the English protestant lady who believes 
 herself witty when making fun of Italian 
 predilections, are very successful and pithy 
 specimens of those inevitable bores, who, find- 
 ing it dull at home, are unfortunately rich 
 enough to indulge the privilege of annoying 
 others abroad, by obtruding themselves upon 
 good honest folks, whom they are bound to 
 despise by reason of the prejudices belonging to 
 their country and their religion. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 47 
 
 XIII. 
 
 HAVE returned from Wildbad, and am again 
 beside the sick man's couch. His strength 
 diminishes visibly ; all that he addresses to me 
 henceforth, whether in prose or verse, reveals his 
 increased depression and sadness. Here are some 
 of his notes, and although they afford but little 
 literary interest, yet they give a correct idea of the 
 physical and mental sufferings he endured : — 
 
 "My dear Soul, 
 
 " My mind is so harassed, I scarcely know 
 whether I asked you to come to-day, Thursday, or 
 only to-morrow, Friday. I am so unwell to-day, 
 that to make assurance doubly sure, let us appoint 
 next Saturday for your dear visit. I shall depend 
 upon you then. Come soon. I take advantage of 
 
48 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 this Opportunity to transmit the manuscript of 
 the poems, and please kindly bring it back when 
 read, so that you may, when perusing it with me, , 
 acquaint me with any improvements you may 
 deem expedient. Dear and beloved creature ! I 
 am very ill and quite as bad morally as physically. 
 German loyalty and probity are treating me most 
 shamefully. I press the lotus-flower to my heart: 
 and remain her devoted, 
 
 " H. H. 
 " Thursday'' 
 
 '■^ Friday, January iitk, 1856. 
 
 "Dear Child, 
 
 " To-day, I have a dreadful nervous 
 headache, which may last, I fear, over to-morrow, 
 or may even increase. I hasten to let you know 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 49 
 
 that there will be no school to-morrow, and you 
 can dispose of your afternoon according to your 
 fancy. But I expect you the next day, Sunday. 
 If you should not be able to come, my dear gentle 
 child, let me know. You need fear no beating 
 from me, even if you deserved such a punishment 
 for great stupidity — for to handle the rod requires 
 more strength than I possess. 
 
 " I am oppressed, suffering, and sad. 
 
 " Kiss the ' 'pattes de moucke.' 
 
 "Your friend, 
 
 "H. H. 
 
 " I think incessantly of the mouche, but do not 
 wish to see her to-day, Tuesday, nor even to- 
 
 1 A iouhXt-entaidre, "fattes de mouche" signifying " a scrawl," 
 as well as fly's feet, in allusion to "Jim mouche." 
 E 
 
so THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 morrow. I am very ill, but Thursday, I shall hope 
 to see the dearest of mouches. 
 
 " I cannot distinguish what I write. 
 
 "H. H." 
 
 " Tuesday. 
 "Dear Friend, 
 
 " I am still very ill, and cannot receive 
 you to-day. But I trust you will manage to come 
 to-morrow, Sunday. Send me a line in case you 
 are obliged to defer your visit until the day after 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " Your poor friend, 
 
 " Nabuchadnezzar II., 
 
 " For I am as insane as the King of Babylon, 
 and only eat minced grass, called by my cook 
 Spinach." 
 
heinrich heine. $1 
 
 "My Very Dear and Gracious Darling, 
 
 " I do not ask you to visit me to-morrow, 
 Wednesday, for I feel a headache coming on, but 
 if you could spare me a few moments on Friday 
 afternoon, it would be some compensation for not 
 having set eyes on you for so long. 
 
 "After Friday, all days will suit me equally 
 well to welcome you, and the oftener you call, 
 the happier I shall be. My good, my gracious, 
 and "fine mouche," come and buzz around my 
 nose with your little wings. I know a song of 
 Mendelssohn's, of which the burden is : ' Come 
 soon!' That melody haunts me continually, 
 'Come soon.' I kiss the two dear paws not 
 together, but one after the other. Adieu. 
 
 "H. H." 
 
52 the last days of 
 
 "Dear Creature, 
 
 "I have a dreadful headache to-day 
 and dread the consequences for to-morrow. I 
 therefore must beg you not to visit me to-morrow, 
 Sunday, but on Monday instead, unless business 
 brings you into this neighbourhood, when you 
 might call at your risk and peril to see me. 
 I have a great desire to behold you again, last 
 flower of my mournful autumn, beloved madcap. 
 
 " I remain, with doting fondness, 
 " Your devoted, 
 
 " H, H. 
 
 " I must use at once the pretty envelopes and 
 kiss the beloved paw that has addressed them 
 so nicely. I passed a bad night, my cough 
 worried me incessantly, and I cannot speak. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. S3 
 
 Thanks likewise for the exquisite copy of the 
 letter to Madame de R. 
 
 "Greeting and love. I grin with pain, I 
 gnash my teeth, I erow mad 
 
 "H. H." 
 
 "Dear 'Mouche,' 
 
 " I am still overwhelmed by a headache, 
 certain to last until to-morrow, Wednesday. I 
 cannot therefore hope to see my beloved ' mouche ' 
 before Thursday. How vexatious ! I am so ill ! 
 ' 'My brain is full of madness and my Jteart is full 
 of sorrow!'' Never was poet more miserable 
 amidst the complete happiness which seems to 
 mock him. I place a living impression upon 
 all your charms, but only in imagination. 
 
 ^ In English in the original. 
 
54 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Imagination is all I can offer you, ^'poor girl! 
 
 Au revoir. 
 
 "H. H. 
 " Tuesday, noon. " 
 
 " Beloved ' Mouche,' 
 
 " I have spent a very bad night groaning, 
 and am well-nigh dispirited. 
 
 " I expect to hear you buzz about me to- 
 morrow. I am, besides, as sentimental as a pug- 
 dog in love for the first time. Could I but pour 
 out all this sentimentality over M^e- Koreff's 
 charms ! But destiny refuses me even that 
 satisfaction. You understand nothing of the above, 
 for you are a goose. 
 
 " Your gosling, 
 
 "GOSLIN I., 
 " King of the Vandals." 
 
 1 In English in the original. 
 
heinrich heine. 55 
 
 "Dear Gentle Friend, 
 
 "Thanks for your affectionate note. I 
 
 am glad to hear that you are well. As for me, 
 
 alas ! I am still very ill, weak, and restless, often 
 
 affected to tears by the least annoyance, by the 
 
 smallest trick that Dame Fortune plays me. 
 
 Every invalid is a poor fool ; I do not like to 
 
 be seen in so pitiful a plight. But what does it 
 
 signify? For all that, I must hear my Fly buzz. 
 
 Come very soon ! As soon you please. Madam, 
 
 or sooner even, pray understand that. I mean 
 
 as soon as possible, my dear, my beloved little 
 
 being: I have scrawled the poem I forward you, 
 
 pure ^ Chcerentonesque poetry : A madman to a 
 
 madcap. 
 
 " H. H." 
 
 1 Chserenton — The French Bedlam. 
 
56 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 "Paris, August it^tk. 
 "Dear Lady, 
 
 " I wrote the above few lines to you 
 yesterday, but did not send them. I was too ill. 
 To-day, I learn, with sincere regret, that you 
 called yesterday, and I hasten to write and beg 
 you to repeat your visit very, very soon. I am 
 much better. A thousand thanks for the poems, 
 but I have not yet read them. 
 
 " Yours most lovingly, 
 
 "H. H. 
 
 "My 'fine mmcke's' visit did me good yester- 
 day. I think incessantly of the best, the most 
 charming, the most agreeable of 'fines mouches.' 
 But I shall not see her, till the day after to- 
 morrow. What an eternity to wait. I might 
 easily die a hundred deaths meanwhile. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 57 
 
 "Think a little of me, small ganz (goose). 
 
 "You very humble servant, 
 
 " Hans. 
 " Tuesday'.' 
 
 The following letter was originally written in 
 French : — 
 
 "My Dear Child, 
 
 " I am no longer ailing but simply 
 bored, for, during the last two days, workmen 
 have been busy putting an awning, with which 
 I could dispense, over my window. I read your 
 little manuscript over and over again with 
 infinite pleasure. We must discuss it. Come if 
 you can to-morrow. I long to see you once 
 more, and think constantly of my 'fine mouche' 
 
 " H. Heine. 
 " Thursday Morning!' 
 
5 8 the last days of 
 
 "Amiable Friend, 
 
 "I am so ill to-day that I fear there 
 will be but little improvement to-morrow. Thus 
 I am compelled to ask you to defer your visit 
 till Saturday or Sunday. Your veil is quite safe, 
 carefully folded on my Secretary. I love you 
 with the tenderness of a dying man ; that 
 means, most tenderly. 
 
 "H. H. 
 
 Tuesday" 
 
 ^'Sunday, September jptli, 1855. 
 
 "Dear Heart, 
 
 " The weather is bad, and I am as 
 bad as the weather. I will not expose my 
 lotus-flower to the inclemency of these gloomy 
 fogs. Ah ! how I long to transform this miser- 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 59 
 
 able day into one of those radiant Indian 
 mornings such as are found on the banks of the 
 Ganges, and prove so congenial to lotus-blossoms. 
 Come soon, but not to-day. I shall expect you 
 on Wednesday afternoon. I hope this arrange- 
 ment will suit you. I place, &c. 
 
 "H. Heine." 
 
 " Dearest, 
 
 " I am ailing and fear the indisposition 
 will last a couple of days. I hasten to let you 
 know that I shall be able to see you only in 
 the middle of the week, so as not to spoil our 
 interview by a headache. 
 
 " Ever loving and faithful, 
 
 "H. H. 
 
 " Sunday Morning." 
 
6o THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 "Dear Soul, 
 
 " I am very unwell and very much 
 vexed. My right eyelid, following the bad 
 example of its neighbour, can no longer keep 
 open. I can scarcely write. But I love you 
 dearly, and think of you, my darling! The 
 story did not bore me, and promises well for 
 the future. You are not such a fool as you 
 look, but you are charming beyond expression, 
 and that has a great attraction for me. Shall I 
 see you to-morrow? I do not know; for, if I 
 continued unwell, you might receive a countermand. 
 
 " I feel myself mastered by a snivelling temper. 
 My heart yawns spasmodically. I wish I were 
 dead, or a pug-dog in health needing no medicine. 
 
 "Misery, thy name is 
 
 "Heinrich Heine." 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 6l 
 
 "Dear Soul, 
 
 " I am very miserable. I coughed 
 dreadfully for twenty-four hours ; my head is 
 wracked with pain. I fear it will continue to 
 ache to-morrow. That is why I ask my beloved 
 to defer her visit arranged for Thursday till 
 Friday. My ^ Serinski has just sent word that 
 he is ill and cannot come at all this week. 
 What provoking disappointments, what an awk- 
 ward situation in which to be placed ! I intend 
 complaining of Providence, who acts so unkindly 
 towards me, before the ' Society for the Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Animals.' I shall expect you on 
 Friday ; meanwhile I kiss in imagination ' /es 
 petites pattes de moucke' 
 
 "Your foolish, 
 
 "H. H." 
 
 M. de Zichlinsky, his Secretary. 
 
62 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 XIV. 
 
 |E is very bad, and keeps himself up by 
 his energetic will alone, and by an 
 ardent desire to conclude editing his Memoirs 
 intended to complete his works and to vindicate 
 his actions. The reader is aware that serious 
 obstacles arose to prevent the publication of that 
 curious document, and the defence as well as the 
 prosecution will remain secret. I can scarcely 
 say it is to be regretted. The object of a book 
 ought to be to instruct rather than to insult. 
 Besides, after a time tittle-tattle and personal 
 attacks cease to interest. The greater portion of 
 the public, caring but little for people most of 
 whom have disappeared from the scene, only 
 perceives the meanness of such quarrels, and 
 rightly asks if there is really any reason for 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 63 
 
 defence when nobody thinks of bringing an accu- 
 sation. There remain the friends and relatives 
 of the poet, who especially deplore the uselessness 
 of a work that undoubtedly shortened the writer's 
 life. How often I found Heine covering large 
 sheets of blank paper scattered before him with 
 his firm writing, betraying the boldness and clear- 
 ness of his thoughts ! The pencil wandered with 
 feverish haste over the pages, and assumed, when 
 wielded by the poet's taper fingers, the sharpness 
 of a murderous weapon, apparently injuring 
 spotless reputations. One day, instead of the 
 scratching of the pencil, I heard a cruel laugh, 
 the laugh of satiated revenge. I looked at 
 Heinriph Heine. "I have them," said he; 
 " dead or living they shall not escape. Let 
 him who has attacked me beware when he reads 
 this. Heine does not die like the first best 
 
64 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 man, and the tiger's claws shall survive the tiger 
 himself!" 
 
 XV. 
 
 |HANK Heaven, neither his claws, nor his 
 ^ hatred, nor even the remembrance of the 
 errors and faults he may have committed, have 
 survived Heinrich Heine, but only the undying 
 beauty of his language, the matchless grace of 
 the pictures he evoked ! 
 
 To take him as a whole, what contrasts in 
 his talents, and what contrasts in his life! The 
 most dreamily delicate mind, the most senti- 
 mental, the most German, at the same time a 
 dreadfully ironical wit, wickedly sensual, and 
 thoroughly Parisian. 
 
 His style was sometimes as simple as an old 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 6$ 
 
 popular ballad; at others, refined, extravagant, 
 and complex, like a fanciful modern " feuilleton'' 
 A pagan genius who sculptures Greek godesses 
 to such perfection that they seem carved out of 
 the finest Parian marble, a Christian imagination 
 which paints dolorous virgins such as those rele- 
 gated to the shades of sombre old cloisters by 
 the rigid bonds of sorrow, a constant yearning 
 towards classic Greece and towards the free, 
 material, expansive, and happy life as represented 
 by Plato and Phidias, at the same time a con- 
 stant return to the stiff, mystical figures which 
 Albert Diirer and William of Cologne have 
 piously reproduced in their engravings. 
 
 Besides all that, flights towards all civilisa- 
 tions, — Spain, Persia, Italy, and especially Brah- 
 minical India, and its divine rivers filled with 
 blooming lotus, where the scorx;hing sun and the 
 
 F 
 
66 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 teeming vegetation alone appear capable of real- 
 ising the intensity and fertility of his dreams. 
 
 If from that resplendent world which moved 
 in his mind, we descend to the actions and 
 sentiments of his life, the contrasts are no less 
 striking. He is a Jew brought up by a free- 
 thinking mother, he was born in a protestant 
 country, and went to school at a Jesuit College. 
 He was proud, active, athirst for independence, 
 and his Jewish origin subjected him to many 
 slights, whilst his poverty kept him in durance 
 vile and reduced him to a meagre pittance. He 
 was German to the core, and lived in poverty 
 far from his country. He adored liberty, but 
 the love of controversy raised him into a 
 pangyrist of Napoleon. 
 
 He was agitated by the passionate vehemence 
 of immoderate desires and of the most vivid 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 67 
 
 imaginings, and he spent ten years bed-ridden 
 and paralysed, obliged, in order to open his eye, 
 to raise the lid with his finger. 
 
 His life was always in extremes, whilst 
 Goethe's was ever well-balanced, and his work 
 resembles a little flask of Oriental perfumes, 
 both too choice and too strong, which over- 
 excite our feelings and exhaust our senses. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 'E loved, in the course of our chats, to 
 dwell upon the various incidents of his 
 childhood. I never heard him speak of his 
 people but with affection and gratitude. This 
 man, though so much abused, possessed wonder- 
 ful tenderness, and loved, with boundless regard, 
 
68 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 those who were kind to him. Ill, half-blind, and 
 almost on the eve of death, he indited, with 
 divine artifice, merry letters to comfort his 
 mother. He never exposed her to public criti- 
 cism, and rarely mentioned her revered name. 
 He might, however, have testified, without appre- 
 hension, to all she had done for him. She gave 
 him his earliest intellectual sustenance, and he 
 drew from her conversation, as well as from her 
 blood, both originality and power. 
 
 Mistress Betty Heine, born von Geldern, and 
 daughter of an eminent Jewish physician, had 
 received one of those grand scientific and literary 
 educations which some families in the last 
 century bestowed upon their daughters. She was 
 an excellent logician, and in this at least any- 
 thing but German. She attached great import- 
 ance to precision of words, and described 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 6g 
 
 magniloquence as a sure means of becoming 
 ridiculous and offensive. She did not approve of 
 the sentimentality of the day. By the natural 
 soundness of her mind she was French, but 
 French only in that. , Belonging to a great 
 Jewish family, she loved the people. The Jews 
 remaining aliens and foreigners amidst Christian 
 nations, readily became cosmopolitan and liberal. 
 After having loved France in her great authors, 
 such as Voltaire and Rousseau, she loved her, or 
 at least she submitted to her, when she beheld 
 her in arms and supreme in her native land. 
 Properly speaking, why should Mistress Heine 
 be Prussian? What patriotism could be reason- 
 ably expected from a woman whose religion and 
 race were oppressed by t'he falling Government? 
 Her people and her religion formed her country, 
 and they found better protection under French 
 
70 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 liberalism than beneath German pedantry. The 
 Emperor Napoleon I. had extended France to 
 the banks of the Rhine. The houses, trans- 
 formed for the nonce into inns, were thrown 
 open to the gay and brilliant soldiers, who 
 aspired to the conquests of countries and hearts. 
 Mistress Heine placed her house at their dis- 
 posal. In her they found a generous hostess, 
 who only required them in return, to speak 
 French to her children. Need I say how readily 
 they granted her request? An ahbi dmigri, 
 a jolly drummer of the early wars of the 
 " Directoire" undertook to teach French to the 
 embryo poet ; the plan succeeded admirably, if 
 we judge of it by the progress he made. Not 
 only did he learn French, but he appreciated it, 
 he seized the spirit of the language, he pene- 
 trated the character of the men who spoke it. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. J I 
 
 He saw, per contra, a thing few Germans dare 
 hardly suspect — I mean the distance between a 
 heavy and a Hvely style, how tedious tedium 
 must always prove, how pleasing is pleasantness. 
 His French tutors tried to teach him history, 
 but he did not progress at all ; especially in 
 Roman history his blunders were many, and he 
 invariably confused the histories of Rome and of 
 France, above all with regard to the Csesars 
 (and that to the end of his days) ; a natural 
 enough error, if we consider the language in 
 which he was forced to repeat his lesson. From 
 Caesar to the other divinities of Olympus there 
 was no great distance, and for the child all those 
 people were equally resplendent, and hurled 
 thunderbolts. He ascended only too willingly 
 into Olympus, stopped from choice before dame 
 Venus ; and many a time, if we are to believe 
 
72 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 him, he neglected his exercise to ponder over the 
 beautiful goddess's adventures, and to study her 
 profile and full face. "I knew," said he, "her 
 catechism better than any scholar of ancient 
 Rome ! " This did not prevent him, however, 
 from casting occasionally an imploring look, may 
 be ironically, at a representation of Christ de- 
 livered up to the scourge of his tormentors. It 
 was placed under the arches of the old cloister, 
 apparently as a warning to idle scholars. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 |HESE charming anecdotes which revealed 
 £< so much of the inmost recesses of a 
 
 refined mind, became unfortunately few and far 
 
 between. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 73 
 
 Even with me at hand, he sometimes 
 abandoned himself to those sad reveries when 
 the souls of the sick apparently wander away 
 into unknown and gloomy space. Occasionally, 
 on recovering from this drowsiness, he uttered 
 prolonged groans of despair, or he tried to laugh 
 at some improper story, some ribald saying, 
 which seemed to be borrowed from the coarser 
 passages of ancient Jewish history; he appeared 
 to repeat them inwardly. Unexpected, strange, 
 and poetical words arose like roses from a heap 
 of rubbish, and attracted me anew to the poet, 
 when I was on the point of forsaking, almost 
 against any will, the sensualist, the refined 
 libertine, and sceptic. One day, perceiving that 
 he alarmed me, he stretched out his arm, took 
 hold of mine, and pressed it violently. "Forgive 
 me," he said, "it will soon be over. It is the 
 
74 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 fault of approaching death. It draws near 
 rapidly, and when I feel it quite close to me, I 
 must cling to life, if only by a rotten beam ! " 
 
 He spoke in a whisper, and his hollow voice 
 seemed to issue from the mouth of a corpse, or 
 rather from the pallid lips of one of those 
 vampires which, according to the uncanny 
 Hungarian legend, quit the tomb, and visit at 
 night the abodes of the living to rob them of 
 the strength the vampire needs to re-animate its 
 dead body. 
 
 XVHI. 
 
 ^^^^NE day I arrived at Heine's, my mind 
 3^^!» full of the "Confessions of St. 
 Augustine," which I then read for the first time, 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 75 
 
 and with an enthusiasm that could not fail to 
 cause him to smile. His satirical look confused 
 me, and I asked him if he did not consider the 
 book interesting. 
 
 " Oh ! charming certainly, that is, until his 
 conversion ! " he replied in that clear and 
 vibrating tone which I shall never forget, for 
 its emphasis alone implied raillery. He did 
 not always jest, however, and at certain 
 moments he tried to guess at the future through 
 the thick veil ot the present. A man is more 
 inclined to be sceptical, when he is well and 
 happy. When his sufferings increased, Heine 
 often told me of a sudden impulse constraining 
 him to stretch out his arms towards heaven and 
 to crave for mercy. He experienced this feeling, 
 especially during those endless nocturnal insomnia 
 when the dream of vanished pleasures blended 
 
•]6 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 with the bitter recollection of injustice undergone 
 and insults received — a deplorable condition, when 
 delirium, bringing before him in turns pleasant 
 pictures and threatening faces, caused him some- 
 times to cry out, and at other times to sigh. 
 
 Often, as I said before, he fancied himself again 
 a child in his paternal home, and began life anew, 
 smiling on those dear forms who had always 
 received him so tenderly. 
 
 Once, when awakening from a long slumber, 
 he told me he had dreamt about his father. 
 " He was having his hair dressed, and I per- 
 ceived him through a cloud of powder. Delighted 
 at seeing him again, I tried to rush into his 
 arms. But, strange to say, as I drew nearer, 
 things became confused. Thus, when I wanted 
 to kiss my father's hands, I drew back, chilled 
 with cold, for the fingers turned to withered 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. TJ 
 
 branches ; my father himself became a bare tree, 
 covered with winter rime. . . ." 
 
 We see that the poet remained poet, even in 
 his dreams, or rather his genius, always master of 
 invention, subjected to him the fancies created 
 by his delirium. The nightmare became a poem. 
 Another day, his dream was still more strange, 
 and it suggested the theme of his last poem 
 called " The Passion Flower," of which the trans- 
 lation will be found at the end of the book. 
 He knew he was dead, stretched out motionless 
 at the bottom of a magnificent mausoleum 
 which surpassed all the rest in splendour. 
 Incomparable sculptures, and the most costly 
 marble, rendered it unique, whilst admirable 
 bas-reliefs represented by turns imposing and 
 grotesque scenes, divine and droll characters. 
 But what added to the strangeness of the picture 
 
78 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 was a sad -coloured plant which rose at the foot 
 of the sarcophagus, and seemed as if it would 
 take root there. One single flower crowned the 
 stalk with lanciniated petals, and, in its pale 
 calyx, he saw distinctly the instruments of torture 
 used for our Lord's crucifixion. Suddenly the 
 flower quickened into life, and assumed a human 
 face. A sad, gentle countenance, bent with a 
 compassionate expression towards the dead man, 
 and he soon recognised the well-known features. 
 Oh ! magic of dreams ! His distant country was 
 there before him, no longer angry and severe, 
 but indulgent to the poet, smiling upon the man 
 who, in his youth, had felt her charms, and 
 received her promises. He had loved her first 
 under the white frock of a child. After 
 Veronica, he loved her in the fastnesses of the 
 HartE mountains, under the rosy face of a 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 79 
 
 miner's daughter. He loved her again as a 
 chatelaine on the banks of the Rhine, a 
 legendary Lorelei, watching proudly from her 
 mountain-top the doom of the victims attracted 
 by her magic song. For the last time to-day 
 she appeared in the form of a flower. A 
 melancholy flower, no doubt, emblem of pain, 
 but still a flower in spite of its mourning and 
 funereal symbols. Heine owed her a smile; he 
 could not refuse it. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ^NE morning towards the middle of 
 December I heard an animated con- 
 versation in the invalid's room. I entered, Mme. 
 Heine was absent, but my usual seat by the bed 
 
8o THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 was occupied by a fair lady, both elegant and 
 graceful, who shook hands cordially with me, and 
 seemed quite at home. At the same time, a 
 young man with a pleasant face advanced towards 
 me with a bow. 
 
 For all introduction, Heine kissed me on the 
 forehead, and said, " Here is my ' moucke." I 
 found myself in presence of M^e- Charlotte von 
 Embden, the poet's beloved sister, and one of his 
 brothers, M. Gustav Heine, then Editor of the 
 ' TagblaW at Vienna. They both deemed it 
 right to express their grateful thanks, in all 
 sincerity no doubt, but they confused me. 
 Evidently my poor friend, carried away by his 
 tenderness for me, had lauded me to the skies, 
 and I felt quite relieved when M^e. Embden, 
 pleading the necessity of some business con- 
 versation between the brothers, carried me off 
 
HEINRICH HEINE, 8 1 
 
 into the next room. There, face to face, we 
 conversed at length about the man we both 
 loved, gliding past certain delicate subjects and 
 skimming over others, on which we could not 
 dwell at length. 
 
 At times, one same thought brought tears 
 into our eyes, and we sat hushed as if all were 
 already over. 
 
 We knew, without saying it, that our friend 
 grew rapidly weaker, and that the end was near. 
 
 XX. 
 
 |ID the poet foresee the approach of that 
 end ? Did he guess, when taking leave 
 of his brother and his sister, that the farewells 
 would be final? 
 
82 THE DAYS LAST OF 
 
 At all events, that visit made him nervous, 
 restless, agitated, absorbed as it were, by an 
 increase of fresh anxieties. Notwithstanding all 
 these cares and apprehensions, all the more acute, 
 as they rested on the head of a dying man, he 
 remained amiable. I am not alluding now to 
 that animation, wit — that wonderful intellectual 
 vitality which, with him, remained unimpaired 
 in spite of fearful sufferings, but simply of that 
 desire to forget himself in order to please others. 
 Fete-days, New-year's day — all those dates so 
 irksome to an invalid, only aroused in him kind 
 thoughts and pretexts for making presents. He 
 has now been dead more than tWenty-six years, 
 but my eyes fill with tears when they rest 
 on the pink silk box he sent me, full of 
 bon-bons, six weeks before his death, on the 
 first of January, 1856 — that same first of 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 83 
 
 January when he indited to me one of his 
 prettiest letters. 
 
 "Dear Child (he wrote), 
 
 " I send you my good wishes for the 
 New Year. Though the box may not be 
 tasteful, I hope the chocolate will be to your 
 taste. I know it will not gratify you much if 
 I thus fulfil towards you the duties required by 
 custom, but we must not let those around us 
 suppose any want of mutual esteem. We must 
 therefore be careful not to neglect those little 
 attentions which have becoriie customary. I, 
 for my part, love you so much I cannot see 
 the need of esteem at all. You are my dear 
 'mouchel and my sufferings seem less distressing 
 when I dwell on your sweetness and the charms 
 of your mind. All I can unfortunately do for 
 
84 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 you is to send you such words '■ de Vair 
 monnaye.' My best wishes for a happy New 
 Year 
 
 " I abstain from expressing them — words, 
 words ! I shall perhaps feel well enough to see 
 my ^ mouche' to-morrow. At all events she will 
 come the day after to-morrow, Thursday, to call 
 upon 
 
 " Her Nebuchodonosor II., 
 
 " Formerly atheist to his Prussian Majesty, now 
 worshipper of the Lotus-flower." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 'E possessed up to the last, the same 
 wild fancies, the same audacity of 
 thought and expression, the same versatile wit. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 85 
 
 the same horror of false sentimentality, the same 
 delightful blending of deep tenderness and cruel 
 raillery, which caused him to be considered 
 immoral, first by his fellow-countrymen, and then 
 by those who, owing to their character and 
 education, failed to understand the impetuosity 
 and contradictions of the artistic temperament. 
 His was perhaps, one of the most perfect that 
 ever emanated from that mysterious and eternal 
 hand, which uses the same clay to rough-hew 
 clowns and to create poets. With Heinrich 
 Heine, the true man shows himself in his works, 
 we recognise him constantly in his poems, his 
 tales, those picturesque fragments in which he 
 relates unawares, his own story, the story of a 
 mind prematurely embittered by contact with 
 vulgar humanity. 
 
 In imitation of great artists, he willingly 
 
86 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 takes himself as a subject of study, he has 
 penned numerous sketches, where he borrowed a 
 fancy dress, that which best suited the tone of 
 his mind at the moment, the more or less 
 eccentric tinge of his humour. Unfortunately he 
 only writes in fragments, he confuses various 
 ages, and you perceive the child only through 
 the grown man, as in a labyrinth of floating 
 visions, in semi-obscurity. 
 
 Strange dreams, where raillery cloaks tender- 
 ness, roseate clouds, where fair angel heads 
 appear between baneful demon-faces, transparent 
 fogs gilded by an imaginary sun, shifting land- 
 scapes full of contrasts, sometimes a cloister- 
 garden, and close beside it the blue waters of a 
 Greek river, sometimes Gothic ruins, and close by 
 the Indian cactus, displaying its blood-red purple 
 blossoms. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 87 
 
 Amidst all these enchantments appears a 
 scholar, thoughtful or absent, a cynical or mystic 
 student, of whom you will see the original types 
 in the book of " Tambour Legrand" or in the 
 memoirs of " Schuabekwopski" in the pages of 
 the "Florentine Nights," and in some of the 
 most touching chapters of the " Reisebilder." 
 The future Heine shows himself in the expression 
 of his mobile countenance, and in the exuberance 
 of that .imagination, wild, powerful, morbid, and 
 passionate. Satire already curls the lip, the 
 forehead is prematurely lined, the soul has 
 strange eccentricities, , sometimes fanciful, and at 
 others mournful. What he delights to represent 
 are splendid forms coupled in monstrous groups; 
 here a child pressed against the bosom of a 
 goddess, there a bleeding and swooning youth 
 embracing a sphinx, yonder a man holding in 
 
88 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 his arms a corpse. Whether beautiful or 
 revolting, these figures attract and rivet the eye. 
 Behind them you perceive the still stranger 
 figure of the poet, a pale face, with flaming eyes, 
 a calm smile, a head worn by the wear and tear 
 of desires and anxieties, and matured by the 
 tendencies of thoughts that knew no restraint. 
 The mind it contains is naturally rebellious as 
 well as eccentric, from the first he contemned 
 public opinion, he shook himself free of the law. 
 But he was too high-bred to fall into those 
 philosophic sophisms, which, in Schiller's days 
 transformed a disappointed gentleman's son into 
 a leader of banditti, or to accept the fallacies of 
 positivism, which, in our days transform a 
 discontented young man into a pretentious and 
 unscrupulous swindler. On the other hand, he 
 surprises you by the precocious arrogance of his 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 89 
 
 causticity and disdain, by the audacity of his 
 imaginary desires, by his aversion to any simple 
 and pure creation, by his instinctive search 
 after immoderate and frenzied sensations. With 
 the true skill of a "raffini" artist, he knew how 
 to keep cool, whilst making you shudder. 
 
 "Madame," said he recalling one of the most 
 painful recollections of his childhood, "you 
 cannot think how pretty Veronica looked in her 
 little coffin. The burning tapers placed around, 
 lighted up her little pale and smiling face, the 
 red silk rosettes and the gold tinsel leaves, which 
 adorned her tiny head and shroud. Pious Ursula, 
 the nurse, took me one evening to that silent 
 room, and at sight of the coffin, the flowers and 
 the tapers on the table, I fancied she was a 
 beautiful waxen figure, but I soon recognised 
 that dear face, and asked, smiling, why little 
 
90 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Veronica remained so quiet. Ursula replied, 
 ' Death is the cause ! ' " 
 
 Strange to say, living and blooming nature 
 repelled him like a hackneyed show, and for that 
 reason, disagreeable. " Her face," he said of a 
 young girl, "had that physical freshness, those 
 carnation tints, a rose-colour which impress me 
 painfully, for I prefer the tints of a corpse or of 
 marble!" 
 
 What he liked, and what fascinated him in 
 the beloved faces of the dead and dying, was 
 the impassive coldness of the being removed 
 from time and real existence. Such is Joanna, 
 the enthusiastic worshipper of the Madonna, she 
 to whom Lorelei, the beautiful fairy of the Rhine, 
 appears in the evening, such is Sophia, the pale 
 girl, who loves Novalis so much and dies from 
 reading his works too often. Such is the mysterious 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. pi 
 
 heroine of the "Florentine Nights," that "Maria 
 la morte" whose offended spirit reappears through 
 most of Heine's works, and pursues him incessantly. 
 The women who recur in his imaginings are of too 
 subtle, too exalted a nature, to have endured life 
 for long, they are not women, real blood, never 
 
 , ran in their veins. He told me himself, "I have 
 
 never really loved but statues or dead women ! " 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, he only bowed down 
 
 Haefore his dreams, and the indefinable majesty 
 of death, or the sublime pallor of marble, before 
 the distant and tragic apparitions of fancy or of 
 history, before the royal spectre of the imperious 
 Jewess Herodias, before these wonderful creatures 
 compounded of mud and gold, whom he some- 
 times calls Laurentia or Verry, and who partake 
 of the fairy and the vampire, of the ghoul and 
 the angel. 
 
92 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 XXII. 
 
 |HE month of February began badly. The 
 ^ weather was dark, cold, and wet; and a 
 cold which kept me indoors interrupted, for a 
 time, my visits to him. 
 
 He enjoyed much the pretty fairy-tales given , 
 by M. Laboulaye as New-year's gifts to the 
 readers of the Journal des Debats, and he begged 
 me to obtain the number containing the rest of 
 these tales. For want of exact information, I 
 was obliged to go myself and buy the number 
 required, and it was only at the end of the week 
 that I again visited my friend, alas ! without 
 suspecting that I should then see him for the 
 last time among the living. When I entered, 
 the deathly pallor of his features struck me. I 
 found him in the twilight of one of the saddest 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 93 
 
 winter days, mournful, dejected, and depressed. 
 "Here you are at last," he said. He had often 
 before greeted me with the same words, but to- 
 day he uttered them in a tone of reproach rather 
 than affection. Therefore even he also misunder- 
 stood me. The injustice of the reproach went to 
 my heart: I burst into tears. The difficulty of 
 explaining matters to such an invalid, and of 
 making him believe that in leaving my bed to 
 visit him I had made a great effort, tortured me. 
 Suddenly, in spite of the darkness that concealed 
 my face, he guessed my trouble, he called me 
 to him, and made me sit on the edge of his 
 couch.- The tears which ran down my pale 
 cheeks seemed to disturb him greatly. 
 
 "Take off your bonnet that I may see you 
 better," he exclaimed. 
 
 And with a caressing movement he gently 
 
94 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 touched the bow which tied my bonnet. I 
 instantly threw it off and fell on my knees 
 beside the bed. Was it the bitter remembrance 
 of past sorrow, or the still more painful presenti- 
 ment of future grief? I tried vainly to subdue 
 the sobs which suffocated me, and I felt myself 
 overwhelmed by the violence of my feelings. 
 We remained silent, but he placed his hand on 
 my head and seemed to bless me. Thus passed 
 our last interview. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 HEN on the threshold of his room, 
 t almost on the stairs, I heard him call 
 out, in his dear, vibrating, spasmodic tones — 
 " Come to-morrow, do not fail ! " 
 And I disobeyed that last request ! 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 95 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 |HE lapse of a quarter of a century since 
 ^ the events related above has confused 
 some of my recollections. Thus I cannot exactly 
 call to mind the reason of failing to return the 
 next day to my friend. Was I feverish ? Was 
 I worse? It is possible, even probable, that I 
 could not undergo such scenes with impunity ; 
 for I was young and delicate. I am certain, 
 however, that by a great effort I might have 
 paid that visit, and thereby fulfilled a sacred 
 duty and been spared everlasting remorse. My 
 excuse towards Heine and my vindication towards 
 myself must be, that I felt myself literally 
 breaking down under the weight of an indefin- 
 able sensation. When awake, I had a strange 
 feeling of dualism in myself, an intellectual 
 
96 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 witchery, which Heine has so well described in 
 one of the poems he addressed to me. ^ When 
 asleep, I felt myself tormented by I know not 
 what dismal nightmare ; death pursued and sought 
 to drag me, living and young, down into that 
 gulf opened wide to those who to-morrow will be 
 only dust and ashes. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 ^^&N that Sunday, February 17th, I awoke 
 ^^PS in a singular manner. Towards eight 
 o'clock, I heard a noise in my room, a kind of 
 
 1 " Dich fesselt raein Ged ankenbann, 
 
 Und was ich denke, must du denken." 
 
 My thoughts fill and o'erwhelm thy mind, 
 What I think doth thine ever bind. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 97 
 
 fluttering, like that produced on summer evenings 
 by moths entering the open windows and seeking 
 noisily for egress. I opened my eyes, and closed 
 them again immediately, for a black form was 
 writhing like a gigantic insect in the dawn, and 
 sought some way of escape. 
 
 The remembrance of that vision — the only 
 one I ever had — about which I make no 
 comment, and only mention because of its 
 strangeness, will always remain connected in 
 my mind with the date of Heinrich Heine's 
 death. 
 
 In spite of the cold and the remains of a 
 
 severe indisposition, I knocked at ten o'clock at 
 
 my dear poet's door. When told that he had 
 
 gone to his last restj I felt stunned and scarcely 
 
 understood it. After the first moment of stupor, 
 
 I asked to see him. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 They took me into the silent room where, like 
 a statue on a tomb, the body rested in the 
 majestic calmness of death. Nothing human in 
 that cold corpse, nothing which recalled the 
 man who had loved, hated, and suffered : an 
 ancient mask, over which the final calm cast a 
 frost of haughty indifference, a pale, marble face, 
 the pure profile recalling the most perfect chef 
 d'auvre of Greek sculpture. Such I beheld him 
 for the last time ; his features, deified so to 
 speak, brought to mind some beautiful allegory. 
 Death showed itself just towards one who had 
 loved it, and transformed him into a statue, 
 when, like the divine figure depicted in his 
 " Pilgrimage to Kevlaar," the great consoler had, 
 in the early morning hour, bent its steps 
 towards the invalid's couch to release him from 
 his sufferings. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 99 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 ^EATH causes sudden and unreasoning 
 terror. But only a feeling of profound 
 admiration possessed me on be:holding that noble 
 form pillowed in everlasting slumber. Astonish- 
 ment congealed my unshed tears, but the icy 
 coldness of the hand which my lips could not 
 warm, recalled the dire truth. I then understood 
 that he was dead ; and, impelled by an involuntary 
 feeling of repulsion, I left the chamber where 
 my presence was no longer of consequence. A 
 kind of bewilderment obscured my ideas ; and for 
 the next few days I only experienced one definite 
 feeling, a dead calm, which would last as long as 
 I lived — something like the despair of a ship- 
 wrecked mariner who only escapes the tempest 
 to perish in a desert. 
 
100 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 All was at an end, and for ever. No more 
 tender words, no cries of joy, or, what affected 
 me more deeply, imprecations, curses, rage, if by 
 chance I arrived late, or felt obliged to shorten 
 my visit. How the lion bounded on his couch 
 when I arrived ! And what upbraiding if I 
 delayed ! The picture of a torture summed up 
 in two words, a cry of anguish. "You cannot 
 understand the meaning of the word waiting to 
 Prometheus chained to his rock ! " 
 
 Who amongst my surroundings will ever love 
 me so well ? Silence of death ! Oh I how I 
 should like to recall the tempest, the cruel 
 importunities which formerly wore away my 
 life, filling my mind with fatal doubts and 
 alarming queries! I had foreseen all except this 
 sudden silence, all save this limitless calm, the 
 mere thought of which weighed more heavily on 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 lOI 
 
 my shoulders than the lead of his coffin on his. 
 I often wished to die to escape from him, and 
 he revenged himself from the tomb by crushing 
 me. 
 
POEMS. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 Zbc passion jflowcr. 
 I. 
 
 ^j^^^Y dream was framed in semi-obscurity. 
 Sl^iiii A summer's night. Dim fragments, 
 mutilated remains of a dead magnificence, odds 
 and ends of architecture, ruins from the time of 
 the Renaissance, lie scattered about, beneath the 
 fluctuating light of the moon. Here and there a 
 column, with its classical Doric capital, stands 
 erect amidst the crumbling remains. Pointing 
 daringly towards Heaven, it seems to defy the 
 thunderbolt. 
 
 Elsewhere, the remains of porticoes, of gabled 
 
I06 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 roofs, the corners of which, laboriously carved, 
 are adorned with sculptures representing creatures 
 that are neither man nor beast — gargoyles, 
 sphinxes, centaurs, satyrs, and fabulous monsters ; 
 in short, all the fantastic creatures of the mytho- 
 logic world lie scattered on the ground. 
 
 More than one woman's form, sculptured in 
 stone, reposes in the grass, wan nudity, beneath 
 a network of wild vegetation. 
 
 Time, that incurable syphilis, has eaten away 
 their noble noses, the classic noses of goddess 
 and nymph. 
 
 A marble sarcophagus, the only perfect monu- 
 ment amidst this heap of fragments, dominates 
 the ruins ; and in this tomb reposes, preserved 
 likewise from the effects of destruction, a dead 
 man, with a gentle and melancholy countenance. 
 Cariatides, with outstretched necks, support the 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. IO7 
 
 monument, and the bas-reliefs round it represent 
 a world of sculptured figures. 
 
 Here the eye rests upon the grandeur of 
 Olympus and the wanton heathen goddesses. 
 Standing beside them are seen Adam and Eve, 
 wearing the modest aprons of fig-leaves. 
 
 Behold the fall of Troy — Troy perishing in 
 the flames — Paris, Helen, and Hector. 
 
 Biblical characters — Aaron, Moses, Judith, and 
 Holophernes, the impious Haman himself — follow 
 in the procession of Greek heroes. 
 
 The same bas-relief contains an image of the 
 god Amor, of Phoebus-Apollo ; then groups 
 composed of Vulcan and dame Venus, Pluto and 
 Proserpine; lastly. Mercury and Bacchus, accom- 
 panied by Priapus and Silenus. 
 
 Behind them appears Balaam's ass (the latter 
 a striking likeness); you also see the sacrifice of 
 
I08 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Abraham, and Lot (who got tipsy with his" 
 daughters). 
 
 Here dances Salome ; they are bringing in a 
 charger the head of John the Baptist. Further 
 on, Hell with Satan, and St. Peter bearing the 
 gigantic key which opens the gates of Heaven. 
 
 Beyond this, a lewd picture, the loves and 
 misdeeds of Jupiter, how he seduced Leda under 
 the guise of a swan, and Dance as a shower of 
 gold pieces. 
 
 Here Diana, followed by her suite of nymphs 
 in short tunics, flashes by, hounds running and 
 panting after her ; close by, Hercules, disguised 
 as a woman, spins with the distaff on his arm. 
 
 There Mount Sinai comes into view, the 
 Israelites worship the golden calf at the foot of 
 the mountain, and Christ as a child is seen dis- 
 puting with the elders in the Temple. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. lOQ 
 
 The contrasts are boldly expressed. The 
 voluptuousness of pagan Greece and the divine 
 personification of Jewish thought. 
 
 The ivy twisting around the figures enwraps 
 them in its gloomy clasp. 
 
 Oh ! the fancifulness of dreams ! Whilst my 
 eyes dwelt upon these sculptures, methought 
 suddenly that I was the dead man filling that 
 magnificent tomb. 
 
 A flower bloomed at the head of my couch, 
 a blossom of enigmatical appearance. Its petals 
 were violet and saffron, and it exhaled a wild 
 charm of love. 
 
 The people call it "passion flower," and say 
 it sprang up on the soil of Calvary from the 
 crucified Saviour's redeeming blood. 
 
 According to the legend, that flower 
 bears a witness of blood, and its calyx repre- 
 
no THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 sents all the instruments of our Lord's martyr- 
 dom. 
 
 Nails, hammer, thongs, and chalice, the cross 
 and the crown of thorns ; all the attributes of 
 the passion, all the bloody appliances of torture. 
 
 Such a flower grew near my tomb, and bend- 
 ing over my corpse, like a sorrowing woman in 
 mute distress, kissed my forehead, my eyes, my 
 hands. 
 
 Oh ! sorcery of dreams ! Behold, by a strange 
 transformation, the yellow and purple passion 
 flower becomes a woman, and that woman is my 
 beloved. 
 
 Yes, thou wast the flower, oh my child ! I 
 knew thee by thy kisses. Flower-lips are not so 
 soft, flower-tears do not burn. My eyelids were 
 closed, but my mind still contemplates thy face. 
 Thou didst look at me as if in rapture; pale 
 
HEINRICH HIENE. Ill 
 
 thou wert, beneath the rays of the moon, which 
 caressed thee with its fantastic glimpses. 
 
 We did not speak, and yet my heart heard 
 what passed in thine ; the word pronounced 
 aloud sounds worse, the pure flower of love is 
 silence ! 
 
 And how eloquent such silence ! All can 
 be said without metaphor ; the soul sees 
 not the need of hoisting the hypocritical 
 -vine-leaf; we understand, without heeding the 
 beauty of the rhyme or the rhythm of the 
 sentence. 
 
 Face to face, words unveiled assume too 
 • crude an aspect. Flesh is subject to the con- 
 ditions of time and place, but thoughts know no 
 fetters. 
 
 By a calm look they seal their agreement. 
 Sometimes urged by a strange desire, they rush 
 
112 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 into folly ; then suddenly they reappear as white 
 and spotless as regal swans. 
 
 Mute dialogue — we can scarcely believe 
 how time flies, during the silent converse, 
 in the delightful dream of a summer's night, 
 interwoven with pleasure and terror. Never 
 ask me what we said. Question the glow- 
 worm as to whence comes its brightness, or 
 bid the wave explain its murmuring; ask the 
 west wind the meaning of its moanings and 
 plaints. 
 
 Seek the purport of the fire in the carbuncle, 
 or of the perfume in the rose, but never — dost 
 thou heed me? — never ask about what the dead 
 man and the flower of martyrdom communed 
 together under the moon's rays in the funereal 
 garden. 
 
 I ignore how long I enjoyed that beautiful 
 
IIEINRICH HEINE. II3 
 
 calm dream in my cool marble cell. Alas ! my 
 quietude soon vanished. 
 
 Thou alone, Death, with thy sepulchral 
 silence, canst give us perfect delight. Brutal 
 and absurd life gives us the convulsions 
 of passion — that is to say, harassed and 
 .anjdous pleasure, incessant agitation, as true 
 happiness. 
 
 Alas ! shocking clamours from without, ended 
 my bliss. My flower fled before the vulgar noise 
 of a low dispute. Yes ! I heard the sound of 
 voices raised in quarrel in transports of rage. 
 Certain accents struck me. I fancied I recognised 
 the tones of the personages sculptured on the 
 bas-relief of my tomb. 
 
 What ! can the superannuated ghost of Faith 
 
 haunt the stone ? Does dissension appear amongst 
 
 marble groups? There is Pan's warning cry— 
 I 
 
114 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 wild god of the forests, who seems to rival in 
 energy Moses in his wrath. 
 
 Never can that quarrel end, for strife will 
 ever exist between the beautiful and the true ; 
 the army of humanity must always remain divided 
 into two camps — that of the Barbarians and that 
 of the Hellenes. 
 
 How they abused each other! What insults 
 they hurled at one another! Their insipid 
 controversy was never-ending! There was 
 especially a certain ass, Balaam's ass ; it made 
 more noise than the gods and the saints together. 
 
 With its hee-haw, hee-haw, its ridiculous and 
 stupid braying, the foolish beast provoked me. 
 At last, even I screamed aloud and awoke. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. II5 
 
 II. 
 
 HOU art bound within the magic circle 
 ^1^^ of my thoughts, and when I imagine 
 and dream, so must thou in thy turn dream 
 and imagine in like manner. 
 
 Thou canst not escape from my mind's 
 embrace. Its fierce breath envelops thee ; even 
 in thy bed, thou art not safe from its sneer 
 and its caress. 
 
 Whilst my corpse lies in the tomb, my mind 
 survives, and, like a familiar spirit, occupies thy 
 heart, my ever graceful one. Vouchsafe it 
 readily the soft little nest. Whatever thou 
 mayest do, thou canst never escape from the 
 monster, the poor scamp, didst thou even flee 
 to Japan or China. 
 
 For, wherever thou mayest wander, my spirit 
 
Il6 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 nestles in thy heart ; it there dreams its foolish 
 dreams, and there attempts its somersaults. 
 
 Dost thou hear ? It is making music, and 
 its bounds, like its chords, have such power that 
 the fly, wandering in the folds of thy curtain, 
 pauses entranced and leaps with joy. 
 
 III. 
 
 sEAR my sides, my chest, my face, with 
 red-hot pincers, flay me alive, shoot, 
 stone me, rather than keep me waiting. 
 
 With all imaginable torture, cruelly break my 
 limbs, but do not keep me waiting ; for of all 
 torments disappointed expectation is the most 
 painful. 
 
 I expected thee all yesterday afternoon until 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. II7 
 
 six o'clock. But thou didst not come, thou 
 witch, and I grew almost mad. Impatience 
 encircled me like the folds of a viper, and I 
 bounded on my couch at every ring, but oh ! 
 mortal anguish, it did not bring thee. 
 
 Thou didst fail to come; I fret, I fume, and 
 Satanas whispered mockingly in my ear — "The 
 charming lotus-flower makes fun of thee, thou 
 old fool!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 |ORDS, words, and no deeds! Never 
 ("aiil^ any meat, darling dolly. Always soul, 
 and never any roast! For ever soupe maigre. 
 Who knows if the fierce bounds of Dame 
 Nature, riding her hobby-horse. Passion; who 
 
Il8 THE LAST DAYS OF 
 
 knows if that diabolical chase, the diurnal gallop 
 of the great steeple-chase of love, would not end 
 by exhausting thy delicate person ? 
 
 Believe me, for thee, darling, a cripple like 
 me is the most healthy of lovers. Therefore I 
 invite thee, my charmer, to devote all the 
 strength of thy soul to the consolidating of our 
 intellectual ties. Such a regimen will suit thee 
 excellently well. 
 
 The End. 
 
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