Last Will and Testament of Siebenkæs, Poor’s Advocate
“The undersigned, now yellowing and falling from the tree with the rest of the August apples, desires, being thus nigh to death, which looses the spirit from the thraldom of the body, to execute a few more merry back-steps, sidesteps, and Sir-Roger-de Coverleys, three minutes before the Basle dance of Death begins.”
The notary paused, and asked in amazement, “Am I to put this stuff, and more like it, down upon paper?”
“Imprimis, I, Firmian Siebenkæs, alias Heinrich Leibgeber, do hereby will and ordain that my guardian the Heimlicher von Blaise shall (and must) pay over, within a year and day after my decease, to my friend, Mr. Leibgeber, inspector in Vaduz,88 the 12,000 florins of trust money whereof he has godlessly defrauded me, his ward: the said Mr. Leibgeber making over the same hereafter faithfully to my beloved wife. In the event of the said Herr von Blaise declining so to do, I here lift up my hand and swear, upon my dying bed, that after I have departed this life I will pursue him, not legally, but spiritually, and will terrify him by appearing to him, either as the devil or as a tall white man, or by my voice merely, according as my circumstances, after my decease, may permit.”
The notary’s feathered arm hovered in air, and he ceased not to shrink and shudder with terror. “All I am afraid of,” he said, “is that if I write down things of this kind, the Heimlicher will get hold of me.” But Leibgeber, with face and body, barred his retreat through that hell-gate, the door of the room.
“Further, as reigning sovereign of the shooter’s company, I will and ordain that no war of succession shall convert my testament into a powder of succession for innocent people. Further, that the republic of Kuhschnappel (into the office of Gonfaloniere and Doge whereof I was balloted with rifle bullets) shall wage no defensive war, seeing that it cannot defend itself if it does—but offensive wars only, with the object of enlarging the boundaries of its territories, they not being easy to protect. And that its members may, in their generation, be as wood-economising as their country and royal burgh’s father has been in his. Now-a-days, when forests are burned to charcoal faster than they grow again, the only thing to be done is to warm the climate a good deal, and turn it into a great brooding-oven, kiln, and field-oven, so as to save the trouble, and obviate the necessity, of having stoves in the houses. And this has been in some measure attended to by careful Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who have cleared away the forests as much as they could, they being full of late winter. When one thinks how very beautifully modern Germany contrasts with that which Tacitus mapped, warmed as it is by the mere cutting down of the forests, we have little difficulty in feeling convinced that a time will come when, there being no more timber at all, we shall arrive at such a temperature that the atmosphere itself shall be our fur pelisse. The reason the present superfluity is burnt to ashes as rapidly as possible is, that the price of raft-wood may be raised, just as a million livres’ worth of nutmegs were publicly burnt at Amsterdam in 1760, to prevent the price from falling.
“Moreover, as King of the Kuhschnappelian Jerusalem, it is my desire that the senate and people thereof (senatus, populusque Kuhschnappeliensis) be not damned, but contrariwise blessed, particularly in this present world. Further, that the town magnates may not devour the Kuhschnappelian nests (houses) as they do the Indian ones, and that the taxes, though they have to pass through the four stomachs of the tax-gatherers,89 may nevertheless issue thence converted from milky chyle into red blood (from silver into gold), and after circulating through the lacteals and the thoracic duct, be impelled in due course into the veins of the body politic. Further, I will and appoint that the greater and the lesser council——”
The notary would fain have stopped here, and shook his head most energetically, but Leibgeber was playing with the rifle with which the testator had elevated himself to the throne of the marksman (whereas it is upon leaping-poles consisting of other men’s ramrods that thrones are usually attained to), and Bærstel wrote on in the sweat of his brow.
“That the mayor, the treasurer, the Heimlicher, the eight members of council, and the serjeant of court, may listen to reason, and reward no merit but that of other people. And that the rascal Blaise, and the scoundrel Meyern may daily lay castigatory hands upon each other, as relations, so that there may at all events always be one to punish the other.”
Here the notary jumped up, declared it took his breath away, and went to the window to get a little air. And as he saw that there was a pile of tanner’s bark within easy shot of the window-sill, his terror, shoving at him from behind, impelled him up on to the sill in question. Having taken this first step, before a testament witness could seize him by the coat-tails, he made a second (and long) one out into the open air, so as to be in a position to reach that modelling-table the heap of bark. Being thus a falling artist (not a rising one), he could do no better on his arrival there than make use of his face as a graving-tool, plastic “form,” and copying machine, and execute therewith a faint bas-relief impression of himself upon the heap of tan. His fingers worked busily as graving-tools, making copies of themselves, whilst, as a matter of pure accident, he countersigned this, his report of the incident, with his notarial seal, which he had taken with him in his descent. So easy is it for one notary to create another, like a Count Palatine. But Bærstel left his co-notary and the entire lusus naturæ behind him, thinking on his homeward way of matters of a wholly different kind. Stiefel and Leibgeber, again, looked out of window, and (the notary having vanished, bag and baggage,) gazed upon his second outward man as it lay outstretched before them upon its anatomical theatre, smelling of Russia leather. Concerning which the author will not add another word of his own, but only these of Henry’s.
“The notary wished to seal the testament with a larger seal than usual—one which nobody might forge—so he sealed it with his own body, and there we see the sphragistic impression all complete.”
The will, such as it was, was duly subscribed by the witnesses and by the testator, and anything but a demi-military testament of this kind was scarcely to be expected in the circumstances. Evening was now drawing on,—the time when sick and sorry man turns him from the sun (as does the earth he dwells on), and towards the twilight evening star of the other world,—when the sick pass away to the latter, and the well gaze at the former—and when Firmian thought to give his wife the long kiss of parting, and then begin slowly sinking. But unfortunately Deacon Revel (the assistant preacher) came rustling in in an electrically stormy fashion. He came arrayed in his ecclesiastical armour, gorget, sash, and all, to administer a befitting rebuke to the invalid (round whose neck he had tied the band of matrimony in a double knot) for trying to evade payment of the confession fee—that toll for the communion of the sick and sound on the highway between heaven and hell. As (on the authority of Linnæus) the ancient botanists—a Croll, Porta, Helvetius, Fabricius—thought that certain plants which had more or less resemblance to particular illnesses were remedies for these complaints, prescribing yellow plants, such as saffron and turmeric, for jaundice, dragon’s-blood and catechu for dysentery, cabbage-heads for headache (as well as prickly things, such as fish-bones, for stitches in the side), so, in the hands of able Gospel ministers, the spiritual materia medica, such as sermons and admonitions, assume the appearance of the spiritual maladies for whose cure they are administered—anger, pride, avarice, and so on. Thus there is often no difference, but one of condition, between the bed-ridden patient and his physician. This was the case with Revel. One of his great objects in life was, in an age when people are so prone to defame the Lutheran clergy by calling them mere Jesuits in disguise, or monks, to give the most unmistakable proof, more by deeds than by words, that he was, at all events, none of the latter (who call nothing their own, and are not allowed to possess property), and for that reason to be at all times on the hunt, and on the snatch, after worldly possessions. Hoseas Leibgeber did his best to make himself a barrier-rope and turnstile for the parson, and stopped him on the threshold, saying, “I fear it won’t be of much use; I tried my own hand yesterday at converting and recoining him flying, (if I may use the expression,) post-haste, volti subito citissime, but all that came of it was that he threw it in my teeth that I wasn’t converted myself—and no more I am. There are whole flocks of heretical singing-birds pecking away at the summer rape-seed of my opinions.” Revel answered (vacillating between a major mode and a minor), “A servant of the Lord bides his time, keeps diligent watch, and does the duty of his sacred calling, striving to save souls—from atheism, as well as from other sin. The event concerns the sinner, and the sinner only.”
So this black storm cloud, charged to the brim with Sinai-lightnings, rolled on into the dim-lit chamber; the parson waved his great, flapping gown-sleeve, like a standard of spiritual healing and rehabilitation, over the atheist (as he thought him) stretched on his bed, and told him in a “sick-bed exhortation” (which is generally the very antipodes of a funeral sermon)—in a “sick-bed exhortation” (I say) such as may one day overtake me and my reader under our last bed-cover, and which I shall therefore avoid sending all the way from Bayreuth to Heidelberg to be put in type, since it may be heard en route going on in any sick-chamber. At the same time he told him, in the said sick-bed exhortation to his face, like a plain-speaking, straight-forward man, that he was a roast for the devil’s table, just done to a turn, and ready to be dished and served. The roast (thus pronounced to be done to a turn), closed his eyes, and endured it. But Henry, whom it pained to see the parson pinching the ears and the heart whom he loved with red-hot pincers, and who was furious at the thought that it was done solely to frighten the sick man into the Confessional—Henry seized his waving arm, and gently reminded him—
“I did not think it would have been very polite, Mr. Kevel, to mention it before—but the patient’s hearing is a good deal impaired. You will find you will be obliged to scream. He has not heard a syllable you have said up to this point. Mr. Siebenkæs, do you know who this is? You see how little he hears. Set to work now at converting me, over a glass of beer—I should prefer that very much, and I hear a great deal better. I’m very much afraid he has a touch of delirium, and, if he sees you at all, thinks you are the devil—for it is with him that the dying have to fence their last bout. It’s a pity he didn’t know what you were saying. He would have been very angry and annoyed—(for confess he will not)—and on the authority of Haller, in the 8th volume of his ‘Physiology, a proper amount of annoyance and vexation has often been known to add weeks to a dying person’s life. But, after all, he is a kind of a true Christian, after a fashion, when all’s said, although he no more dreams of confessing than any of the Apostles did, or the fathers either. When he is gone, you shall hear from my own lips how peacefully a true Christian passes away—no convulsions—no contortions—no agonies of death. He is as completely at home in the world of spirits as the screech-owl is in the village steeple—and just as the owl sits in the belfry while the bells are ringing, I will be bound that our Advocate will never stir when the death-bell tolls for him—for he has acquired, from your sermons, the conviction that he will go on living after he dies.”
In the above speech there was some pretty hard hitting, in the shape of jest, at Firmian’s mock death, as well as at his faith in immortality; such jests, in fact, as none but a Firmian could both understand and pardon. But Leibgeber was, at the same time, making an attack, in all seriousness, on those good people who believe accidental, physical tranquillity in dying to be tranquillity of soul, and bodily struggles to be storms of conscience.
Revel contented himself with replying, “You are of those who sit in the seat of the scorner—whom the Lord will find. I have washed my hands.” But as he would have infinitely preferred filling them, and, moreover, could not succeed in transforming this child of the devil into a confessing penitent, he took his departure, red and silent, escorted downstairs by Lenette and Stiefel with many deferential curtseys and bows.
Let us not make out Henry’s gall-bladder (which is likewise his swimming-bladder, and, alas! often his ascending globus hystericus) to be any bigger than it really is. Let us form a judgment, all the more favourable, of this natural foible of his from considering than Henry had, in the course of his previous career, seen spiritual frères terribles, and gallows preachers of this sort, strewing salt upon the faint, withered hearts on so many deathbeds; and because it was his belief (as it is mine) that of all the hours of a man’s life his last must be the most indifferent as regards religion, inasmuch as it the most unfruitful, and no seed can sprout in it which will bear any fruit of action.
During the brief absence of the courteous couple, Firmian said, “Oh! I am sick, sick, and weary of it all. I cannot carry on the joke any longer. In ten minutes more I intend to lie my last lie, and die—and would to GOD it were not a lie. Don’t let them bring in any lights, but cover me up at once with the mask, for I see very plainly that I shall not be able to control these eyes of mine, and when the mask is on, I shall, at all events, be able to let them weep as much as they like. Ah! Henry, my good, kind friend!”
The infusory chaos of Revel’s exhortation had made this weary figurant and mimicker of Death tender and grave. Henry—out of his delicate and loving solicitude—had undertaken all the lying parts of the rôle, and enacted those himself. He therefore (as the couple were coming back into the room), cried out, in a loud, anxious voice, “Firmian, how do you feel now?” “Better,” said Firmian, in a voice of emotion. “There are stars shining in this world’s night, though I, alas! am clamped to the dust, and cannot soar up to them. The bank of the lovely spring-time of eternity is steep, and, close as we day-flies are swimming to the shore of Life’s Dead Sea, we have not got our wings yet.” Yes! Death—sublime and glorious after sunset-sky of our St. Thomas’s Day—grand amen of our hope, spoken to our ears from the other world—would come to our beds in the likeness of a beautiful giant, with a garland on his brow, and lift us gently up into the æther, and rock us there to rest, were it not that we go to him only as maimed, stunned creatures, who are thrown into his giant arms. What robs Death of his glory is sickness; the pinions of the soul when it rises on its heavenward flight are heavy, and stained with blood, and tears, and mire. The only time when death is a flight—not a fall—is when some hero is smitten by one, single, mortal wound, when, as he stands like a spring-world, all new blossom, and old fruit, the next world suddenly flashes by him, like some comet, bearing him (miniature world as he is) all unwithered, along with it in its flight, to soar with it beyond the sun.
But this mental exaltation of Firmian’s would have been an indication of reviving strength and returning health to sharper eyes than Stiefel’s. It is upon the looker-on only—not upon the victim who is smitten down—that the battle-axe of Death casts a flash of light. It is with the death-bell as with other bells; it is those who are at a distance who hear the solemn, inspiring boom and music—not those who are within the sounding hemisphere. And as every bosom grows more sincere and more transparent in the hour of death—like the Siberian glass-apple, the kernel of which, when ripe, is covered only by a crystal case formed of sweet, transparent flesh—so Firmian, in this dithyrambic hour—near as he was to the bare edge of Death’s sickle—could have gladly sacrificed (that is, discovered) all the mystery and blossom of his future, but that by so doing he would have broken his word and grieved his friend. But nothing was left him now, save a patient heart, dumb lips, and weeping eyes.
Alas! and were not all his ostensible farewells real ones after all? As he drew his Henry and the Schulrath to his heart with trembling hands, was that heart not oppressed by the mournful certainty of losing the Schulrath on the morrow, and Henry in a week’s time, for ever? So that the following address which he made to them was nothing but the plain truth, mournful though it was. “Alas! we shall be scattered asunder by the four winds of heaven in a very, very little time. Ah! human arms are rotten bands. How short a time they hold! May all be well with you—and better than I ever deserved it might be with me. May the chaotic stone-heaps of your lives never come rolling down about your feet, or about your ears—may spring overspread the crags and cliffs around you with berries, and the freshest green! Good night for ever, dearly loved Schulrath, and you, my Henry!” He pressed the latter to his heart in silence, thinking how near the veritable parting was.
But he should have avoided stimulating his heart into feverish excitement by these pricks and stings of farewell, for he heard Lenette mourning out of sight behind the bed, and (with a deep death-wound in his overflowing heart) said, “Come, my beloved Lenette, and bid me good-bye;” and stretched out his arms in a wild manner to receive her. She came tottering, and sank into them, and on to his heart, while he was speechless under the crushing weight of his emotions; till at length, as she lay there trembling, he said, in a low voice, “Ah! poor, patient, faithful, tortured soul! how constantly and unceasingly have I caused you sorrow! Will you forgive me? Will you forget me?” (A spasm of sorrow clasped her closer to him.) “Ah! do but forget me, and forget me quite; for heaven knows you have never been happy with me!” Their voices were lost in sobs, only their tears could flow. A drawing, thirsting grief was grinding at his weary heart, and he went on: “No, no; with me you have truly had nothing, nothing but tears; but there are happy days coming for you, when I shall be gone from you.” He gave her his parting kiss, saying, “Live happy now, and let me be gone!” “But you are not going to die,” she cried again and again, with a thousand tears. He put his arms about her, he gently raised her fainting form from his breast, and said, very solemnly, “It is over now. Fate has sundered us; it is over and past.”
Henry gently led her weeping away; and he cried himself, too; and cursed his plot; and signed to the Schulrath, saying, “Firmian needs rest now.” The latter turned his face, swollen and drawn with pain, to the wall. Lenette and Stiefel were mourning together in the other room. Henry waited till the greater billows had subsided somewhat, and then quietly put the question: “Now?” Firmian gave the signal, and Henry yelled out, “Oh! he is gone!” like a man beside himself; and threw himself down upon the motionless body (to prevent anybody from touching it), with genuine, bitter tears at the thought of the nearness of parting. An inconsolable couple came bursting from the next room. Lenette would have thrown herself upon her husband (whose face was turned away), and she cried, in agony, “I must see him; I must bid my husband good-bye once more.” But Henry told the Schulrath (confidentially) to take hold of her, and support her, and get her away out of the room. The two former things he was able to accomplish (although his own self-control was only an artificial one, assumed with the view of demonstrating the victory of religion over philosophy), but get her out of the room he could not. When she saw Henry take up the mask of death, “No, no,” she cried; “I insist upon being allowed to see my husband once more.” But Henry took the mask, gently turned Firmian’s face (on which the tears of parting were scarce yet dry), and covered it up, thus hiding it for ever from his wife’s weeping eyes. This grand scene lifted up his heart; he gazed upon the mask and said, “Death lays a mask like this over all our faces; and a time will come when I shall stretch me out in death’s midnight sleep as he has done, and grow longer and heavier. Ah! poor Firmian! has that war game of yours been worth the candles and the trouble? We are not the players, it is true; we are the things played with: and old Death sends our heads and hearts rolling like balls over the green billiard-table, and pockets them in his corpse-sack; and every time one of us is pocketed there, the death-bell gives a toll. It is true you go on living in a sense90 (if the frescoes of ideas can be detached from the walls of the body), and oh! may you be happier in that postscript life than in this. But what is it, this postscript life, after all? It will go out too; every life, on every world-ball, will burn out one day. The planets are licensed only to retail liquor to be drunk on the premises. They can’t board and lodge us; they merely pour us out a glass of quince-wine, currant-juice, spirits; but for the most part gargles of good wine (which we must not swallow), or else sympathetic ink (i. e. liquor probatorius), sleeping-draughts, and acids; and then, on we go, from one planet-inn to another; and so from millennium to millennium. Oh! thou kind heaven; and whither, whither, whither?
“However, this earth is the wretchedest village tap-room of the lot; a place where mostly beggars, rogues, and deserters turn in, and which we have always to go five steps away from to enjoy our best pleasures; that is to say, either into memory or into imagination.
“Ah! peaceful being there at rest, may it fare better with you in other taverns than here; and may some restaurateur of life open the door of a wine-cellar for you in lieu of this vinegar-cellar!”