Chapter XX
Apoplexy—the President of the Board of Health—the Notary-Public—the Last Will and Testament—the Knight’s Move—revel, the Morning Preacher—the Second Apoplectic Attack.
In the evening Henry drew up the curtain upon this tragedy (full of comic gravedigger business), and discovered Firmian lying on his bed speechless, with apoplectic head, and all his right side paralysed. The only mode in which the patient could bring himself to endure the torture of the deception, and of the pain he was causing Lenette, was by making a mental vow to send her the half of his yearly income as inspector at Vaduz, anonymously, and by remembering that by his death she would obtain happiness, freedom, and her lover. The occupants of the house formed a circle about the apoplectic patient, but Leibgeber drove them out of the room, saying, “the sufferer must have quietness and rest.” It delighted him beyond expression to be able to go on uttering humourous lies without cessation. He assumed the office of Imperial Hereditary Doorkeeper, and shut the door in the doctor’s face (whom people insisted upon prescribing). “I am going to prescribe a little prescription for the patient myself,” he said, “but, little as it is, it will restore his speech for a time. These cursed death-rivers, doctors’ potions, Mr. Schulrath,” (for that gentleman had been fetched immediately) “are like those rivers which demand a dead body every year.” So he wrote a recipe for a simple sedative powder, as follows, reading aloud as he wrote;—
Rx Conch: Citratæ Sirup: j.
Nitri Crystallisatæ gr. x.
D.S. “The Sedative Powder.”
“But above all things,” he added, in the most imperative tones, “we must place the patient’s feet in warm water.”
However, everybody in the house knew well enough that nothing would be of the slightest avail, as his death had been but too unmistakably foretold by the floury face; and Fecht felt a kind of sympathising satisfaction that he had hit the mark.
Scarcely had the sick man swallowed the powder, than, to the astonishment of the Death-Assurance Association in his bedroom, he found himself able to speak, intelligibly, if not very loud. The domestic Vehmgericht was not, perhaps, altogether pleased with this. But our good Henry had a pretext now for resuming his cheerful mien. He comforted Lenette by reminding her that “here below pain was but an initiation ceremony to something higher—the box-on-the-ear, or sword-accolade whereby a man is dubbed a knight.”
The patient had a very fair night after his sedative powder, and began to have some slight hopes of himself. Henry would not allow Lenette (whose eyes were heavy with tears and sleep) to sit up by his bed during the night. He said he would prefer to be at hand himself, in case there should be any danger; of which, however, there was no great risk, as they made their agreement together (doing so in Latin, like princes) that Death, the fifth act of this tragic interlude, (only one of the scenes of the tragedy of Life,) should take place on the evening of the following day. “Even till to-morrow,” said Firmian, “is too long to wait. I am so unspeakably grieved for my poor Lenette’s sorrow. Like David, alas! I have to make a melancholy choice between famine, war, and pestilence, and have no way out of it but his. You, dear brother, are my Cain, and send me on my journey, and believe in the world to which you despatch me not a bit more than he did.86 Before you prescribed the sedative power which obliged me to talk, I was really wishing, in my silent gloom, that the jest might become earnest. For I must one day pass through that underground portal which opens into the fortress of futurity, in which we shall be safe. Ah! it is not the dying that is painful, it is the parting—I mean from those we love.” Henry said, in reply, “Nature holds a broad Achilles-shield before us to protect us from that final bayonet-thrust of life. On our death-beds we grow cold morally before we do so physically, a strange courtier-like indifference towards all we are leaving creeps frostily through the dying nerves. Sapient spectators say, ‘See, nobody but a Christian can die with such resignation and trust.’ Never mind, dear Firmian; the two or three painful burning minutes which you have to bear till to-morrow arrives are a capital warm bath of Aix water for the sick spirit. It has an infernal smell of rotten eggs now, no doubt, but that will go away completely as the bath grows cool.”
Next day Henry eulogised him as follows. “As Cato the younger slept quietly the night before his death, (history heard him snore,) so you appear to have afforded these debilitated, unnerved, and degenerate days a fresh example of a similar magnanimity. If I were your Plutarch I should record the circumstance.”
“In sober seriousness, though,” answered Firmian, “I should be rather pleased if, several years hence, when Death has presented his second of exchange, some literary West, the historical painter, should honour this odd first death of mine by describing it for the press.” This, we see a biographical West has now actually done, but I beg to be permitted to confess, without hesitation, that it has afforded me sincere gratification to find among the documents this death-bed speech and wish, which I am so completely carrying out. Leibgeber answered, “The Jesuits in Löwen once published a little book in which the terrible end of Luther was minutely described in Latin. Old Luther got hold of the book and translated it, as he did the Bible, merely adding at the end, ‘I, Dr. M. Luther, have read and translated this narrative myself.’ If I were you, when I translated my death into English, I should write that at the end of it too.” Do please write it, dear Siebenkæs, as you are still in life—but translate me, at all events.
Morning brings refreshing to the laid corn of humanity, whether it be laid upon the hard bed of sickness, or on the softer mattress of ordinary health; its breezes lift the bowed heads of both flowers and men: but our sick man remained prostrate. Things seemed distinctly worse with him—he could not disguise from himself that he was losing ground; at all events he resolved to “set his house in order.” This first quarter of the hour of death which the death bell tolled, smote like a sharp and heavy bell-hammer upon Lenette’s heart, whence the warm stream of the old love burst forth in bitter tears. Firmian could not bear the sight of this disconsolate weeping; he stretched his arms beseechingly, and the suffering creature laid herself between them in gentle obedience, on to his breast, their tears, their sighs, and their hearts mingled in the warmest affection, and thus they rested in happiness (though only upon wounds) at this brief distance from the boundary-hill of parting.
For this poor soul’s sake, then, he grew visibly better. Another improvement in his condition was necessary, moreover, to account for the happy frame of mind in which he executed his last will and testament. Leibgeber expressed satisfaction that the patient was able to take some dinner on the table-cloth of the bed-quilt, and swallow the contents of a sick man’s soup-dish about the size of a pond. “The good spirits,” said Leibgeber to Peltzstiefel, “which our invalid is beginning to exhibit again, give me very considerable hopes indeed; though it was evidently only to please his wife that he took the soup.”
Nobody was fonder of lying, or lied oftener, out of satire or humour, than Leibgeber and no one more utterly detested serious untruthfulness than he. He could tell a thousand lies in fun, but not two in a case of serious necessity. For the former he had at his finger’s end every possible deceptive trick of face and language; for the latter not one.
In the forenoon the Schulrath and Merbitzer, the landlord, were summoned to the bedside. “Gentlemen,” began the sick man, “I am thinking of having my last will this afternoon—of declaring, at Nature’s place of execution, the three things which I desire—as the condemned in Athens were allowed to do; but what I wish to do at the present moment is to open one of my testaments before I make my second, or (to speak more accurately) the codicil of my first. I wish my friend Leibgeber to pack up, and keep possession of, all my scribblings as soon as I myself am stuck into my last addressed envelope. Further (and in this I follow the precedent of the Danish Kings, the old Dukes of Austria, and the noble Spaniards—of whom the first were interred in their armour, the second in lion’s skins, the third in miserable Capuchins’ gowns)—I will and ordain that there shall be no hesitation about planting me in the bed of the next world in the very self-same old pod and shell in which I have vegetated in this; in brief, exactly as I am while now testating. This injunction necessitates my making my third that the woman who comes to lay me out shall be paid, and at once sent about her business, because all my life through I have had a most special antipathy to two women—the woman who washes us into life, and the woman who washes us out of it (though in a bigger bath-tub)—the midwife and the woman who lays out the corpse. She is not to lay a finger upon me, nor is anybody except my Henry there.” His hatred of these servants of life and death may probably have proceeded from the same causes as my own, namely the imperious and rapacious nature of the controlling power which these she-planters and caterers for the cradle and the bier exercise in squeezing us just in the two unarmed and weaponless hours of our deepest gladness and our deepest sorrow.
“I further will that as soon as my face has made the signal of adieu, Henry shall roof it over and shield it for ever with our long-necked mask, which I brought down from the box upstairs. I also desire that, when I take my departure from all the fields and plains of my youthful days, and hear nothing behind me but the rustle of the haycocks of the aftermath, I may, at all events, have my wife’s silken garland laid upon my breast, by way of game-counter to mark the joys I have lost. A man can’t go more suitably than with mock insignia, such as that, out of a life which has dished him up such a number of pasteboard pasties full of nothing but wind. Lastly, I will that, when I am gone on my journey, nobody shall clang after me from the church-steeple (like the people of Carlsbad), for we sick and transient watering-place visitors of life (like those of Carlsbad) are received and sent on our way with music from the steeples, especially as the Church’s servants are more expensive than the Carlsbad steeple-man, who only asks three pieces for blowing people in and out.”
At this point he asked that Lenette’s profile-portrait might be given him in bed, and he said, in a faltering voice, “I should like my dear Henry and the landlord to leave the room for a minute, and let me be alone with the Schulrath and my wife.”
When this was done he gazed fondly, a long while, in silence, upon the little likeness. His eyes ran over with sorrow like a broken river-bank. He gave the picture to the Schulrath, paused, overcome by emotion, and said at length: “To you, my faithful friend, and to you alone, can I give this beloved portrait: you are her friend, as well as mine. Oh God! there is not a soul in the great, wide world that will take care of my dear Lenette if you forsake her. Don’t cry so bitterly, my darling; he will be everything to you. Ah! dearest of friends, this helpless, innocent heart will break in desolate loneliness of sorrow unless you protect it and console it. Oh! never abandon it, as I am doing!”
The Schulrath swore by the Almighty that he would never leave her, and he took her hand and pressed it (without looking at her) as she wept, and hung, with eyes raining down with tears, upon the face of his friend, whose voice was so soon to be mute for ever. But Lenette forced him away from her husband’s breast, and liberated her hand, and sunk down upon the lips which had so deeply touched her heart. Firmian clasped her with his left arm, and stretched his right hand to his friend—thus holding to his oppressed bosom the two things on earth that are nearest heaven, friendship and love.
And it is even this very matter which is an endless source of comfort and delight to me in you deluded and disagreeing mortals—that you all love one another heartily and utterly when you only get a chance of seeing one another divested of coverings and fogs—that when we fear we are growing blind we are only growing cold—and that, as soon as ever Death has raised our brothers and sisters up clear of the clouds of our own errors, our hearts melt into bliss and love when we see them soaring as beautiful human creatures, no longer distorted by the mists and concave mirrors of this world, up in the translucent æther; and cannot but sigh forth, “Ah! I should never have misunderstood you if I had always seen you thus.” This is why every loving soul stretches its arms out to those whom poets exhibit to our low-placed eyes, as geniuses, in their cloud-built heaven, though, could he let them sink down upon our breasts, they would lose their beauteous transfiguration in a few short days upon the dirty earth of our necessities and mistakes: as the crystal glacier-water which refreshes, without chilling, must be caught in the air as it drips from its ice-diamond, because it is made impure by the air the moment it touches the earth.87
The Schulrath went out, but only to the doctor. This distinguished Generalissimo of Friend Death (who did not bear the title of “Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health” for nothing, but for money) was very willing to come and see the patient: firstly, because the Schulrath was a man of means and consideration; and, secondly, because Siebenkæs in his capacity of a member of the Corpse Lottery (of which the doctor also was a corresponding member and frère servant), ought not to be allowed to die. For this burial-fund was, in one of its more important aspects, a species of Government Savings’ Bank, or Imperial Treasury for members of the better classes. The sight of this Supreme Councillor of Health, advancing in battle-array, terrified Leibgeber to death. He could not but fear that the advent of the doctor might make matters take a more serious turn, so that Siebenkæs might transmit to posterity a celebrity like that of Molière, who died on the stage while performing the part of the ‘Malade Imaginaire.’ The relation between doctor and patient seemed to him as indeterminate as that between woodpeckers, or bark-beetles, and trees; inasmuch as it is still a moot question whether the trees wither in consequence of these creatures boring into them, and laying their eggs in them, or if (on the contrary) it is because the bark is worm-eaten and the trunk dead, that the beetles come flying to the trees. My opinion as regards beetles and woodpeckers (and doctors as well) is that each is alternately cause and effect; and that there is no such thing as a living creature whose existence can possibly be taken as pre-supposing decay, because, if so, at the creation of the world there would have had to be a dead horse created for the bluebottles, and a rotten cheese for the mites.
Well, Dr. Œlhafen (of the Supreme Board of Health) marched straight up to the sick man (shooting past the one who was not sick, with angry rudeness), and instantly swooped upon life’s seconds’-hand, the medical divining-rod, the pulse. Leibgeber set the plough of satirical anger into the soil of his face, ploughed crooked furrows, and determined upon a course of deep subsoil-ploughing.
“This,” said the professor of the healing art, “is a case of genuine nervous apoplexy, supervening on an undue determination of blood to the head, and a plethora of the vessels. There ought to have been medical attendance at a much earlier stage of the case; the full, hard pulse threatens a repetition of the attack. An emetic powder, which I shall prescribe, will, in the circumstances, produce the best possible effect.” And with this he pulled out some emetic billets-doux, wrapped up like bonbons. This preparation was one which he kept for sale himself, hawking it about from house to house like a Jew pedlar. There were few diseases to which he did not apply these emetics of his by way of “means of grace,” screwjacks, pump handles, and purgatorial fire; but he worked them most assiduously of all in apoplexy chest-inflammation, headache, and bilious fever. What he said was that he “began by clearing the principal passages,” and in so doing he occasionally cleared the proprietor of said principal passages out of this world, so that he found himself passing through the final “passage” of all flesh.
Leibgeber kneaded his odd visage into a new form, and said, “There seems nothing, Doctor Œlhafen (my colleague and protomedicus), to prevent our holding our concilium, or consilium, or collegium medicum, here where we stand. I cannot but think that my sedative powder had a good effect, seeing that it restored apoplectico there the power of speech, yesterday.” The protomedicus took Leibgeber for some quack, and without so much as letting his eyes touch his colleague, said to Peltzstiefel, “Will you get them to bring some warm water, and I will give him the powder myself.” “He and I will take it both together,” burst in Leibgeber, in anger; “both our gall-bladders are acting at present; the patient shan’t, won’t, and mustn’t.”
“Are you a regular practitioner, Sir?” asked the Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health, with contempt.
“I am a Jubilee Doctor, or Doctor Jubilant, and have been so ever since I ceased being a fool. You no doubt remember in Haller the case of the fool who thought his head was off, until they cured him by putting a lead hat on to him. A head roofed and insulated with lead has about as distinct a sense of individuality as one cast in that metal. I was very nearly in the same boat with that fool myself, brother colleague. I had inflammation of the brain, and did not find out so soon as I should have done that it had been put out, and cured. To make a long tale short, I fancied that my head had peeled away (or shall I call it ‘exfoliated,’ or ‘desquamated’), just as one’s feet moulder and drop off, like crab’s claws, when one takes too much ergot. When the barber came in, and threw down his purple tool-bag, or quiver, I said, ‘My dear Surgeon-General Spœrl, it may be perfectly true that flies, tortoises, and adders have been known to go on living after their heads were off, as I do, but there wasn’t much on them to shave. A man of your sense must see that it is as impossible to shave me as to shave the Torso at Rome—where were you thinking of soaping me, Mr. Spœrl? Scarce was he out of the door when in came the wig-maker. ‘Another time, Mr. Peisser,’ said I, ’unless you propose to curl the circumambient air around me, or the hair on my chest, you can put your combs back into your waistcoat pocket. Since twelve o’clock last night I have been carrying on existence without either frieze or cornice, and, like the tower of Babel, I have no cupola. But if you will go and see whether you can find my head in the next room there, and put a queue and a toupée on to that caput mortuum of mine, I should have no objection to that, and I don’t mind wearing the head by a way of a queue-wig.’ By good luck in came the Rector Magnificus. He was a doctor, and saw what distress I was in, when I smote my hands together and cried, ‘Where are my four brain chambers and my corpus callosum, my anus cerebri, and my uniform centrum (which, according to Gläser, is the seat of the imagination)? How can a Rump Parliament wear spectacles, or use ear trumpets? The reasons are obvious. Is it come to this with the monæcius head of the world, that it has no head left for a seed-vessel?’ But the Rector Magnificus sent to the University wardrobe for an old, tight-fitting, doctor’s hat; he put it on me with a gentle push, and said, ‘The faculty never places a doctor’s hat on anything but a head; it could not possibly put it on to a nothing.’ And this hat made a new head grow on to my imagination, like a decapitated snail’s. And ever since I was cured myself. I have taken to curing other people.”
The Board of Health councillor turned a basilisk’s eyeball away from Leibgeber, and lowered himself downstairs by the ribbon of his cane like a bale of merchandize, omitting to pocket his emetic permit for the world to come, which the patient had, consequently, to pay for.
But our good Henry had another war to wage with Stiefel and Lenette, until Firmian threw himself between them as mediator, with the assurance that he would have sent the powder packing in any case, because it would have been anything but good for an old pain in his heart (alas! he spoke figuratively), and two or three Gordian knots in his lungs (the “knots of the plot of his earthly drama”).
But all this time, however good a face he might put on matters, there was no concealing the fact that he was steadily growing worse. The ricochet of the apoplectic shot was clearly imminent, and to be looked for at any moment. “It is time I made my will,” he said. “I long ardently for the Notary Public.” This functionary, as is well known, has the drawing up of all last wills and testaments, according to the laws of Kuhschnappel. At length he arrived, Bærstel by name, a shrivelled and dried-up snail of a man, with a round, shy, listening button-face, all hunger, anxiety, and attention. Many people thought his flesh was merely smeared over his bones, like the new Swedish carton pierre. “What is it your pleasure to have written to-day, Sir?” began Bærstel. “One of my pretty little codicils,” said Siebenkæs. “But before we begin hadn’t you better try me with a catch-question or two, as is usually done with testators, to find out (without letting me know what you are at, you understand) whether I am all right in my head?” “Do you know who I am, Sir?” said Bærstel. “You are Mr. Bærstel, Notary Public,” answered the patient. “Not only is that quite correct,” answered Bærstel, “but it renders it quite clear that you are wandering very little, if at all, and we may proceed at once to draw up your testament.”