6 desperate, and that he was abandoned by his relatives, his anxiety led him to contradict the statement. The interview was necessarily for Heine a most painful emotions in his weak state were injurious to him. He wrote an account of it at the close of his late will, and added: With my uncle my happy star was extinguished for ever; I am very sick, and wonder at myself how I am able to endure these sorrows.' But in a state of health which then seemed desperate it could hardly help occurring to the afflicted man that the generosity of Karl Heine was not so very excessive in consenting to make good his father's promises, since it hardly seemed that he could live out the year 1847; so that Heine's allowance, so far as he was concerned, was not worth a year's purchase. I am delighted,' he wrote to Laube in October 1846, to hear of your purpose of coming here. Only, carry it out quickly. You must hurry yourself, for although my malady is one of quiet progress, I cannot guarantee myself against the salto mortale, and you will come too late to talk of immortality, literary societies, Vaterland, and Campe, and similar great questions of humanity. You might find a very quiet man in me. I remain here the winter in any case, and dwell for the present pretty commodiously at Faubourg Poissonnière No. 41: if you find me not here, look for me, please, in the Cimetière Montmartre, not at Père-laChaise, which is too noisy for me.' Laube kept his promise, and came to Paris in the spring of 1847: the two friends renewed their pleasant intercourse: Laube was shocked at the ghastly change which had taken place in his friend since he last saw him in 1839. There he sat,' he wrote, 'by the side of his wife, she still in the fulness of bodily health, before a dinner table which was no longer spread for him. I had taken leave in smiles seven years ago of a fleshy jovial-looking man with sparks of fire flashing out of his little roguish eyes: now I embraced, nearly weeping, a thin little man in whose aspect no glance of an eye was to be seen. Then he was 6 brilliant and elegant as an abbé of the world; he wore his long hair smooth-combed, and the chestnut-brown shimmer of it danced lovingly in the beam of the light. Then his whole face was smooth as that of a chamberlain, now it was surrounded by a grey beard, since the painfully excited nerves could no longer endure the razor: now his hair had grown dry and was still long but wild, and sprinkled with grey about the high forehead and broad temples. His fine nose had grown longer and more pointed, and the graceful mouth was painfully distorted. Formerly he kept his head bent a little forwards, now it was forcibly held upwards, in order that the pupil of the right eye might be able to reach the little crevice yet open between the lids and see. He bore his sufferings with great patience; indeed he traced in cold blood its certain future, its horrible progress, and its painful end, and he developed this future in the ghastly witty fashion which he was accustomed sometimes to employ upon his enemies. It comes just out of the marrow of life," he said drily: "the doctors may console me as they like, I have nothing to expect but a miserable malady, probably full of vicissitudes. The last circumstance has its advantages. When one suddenly wakes up deaf, one forgets for a time that one has already been blind. And what is the use of it? Just none. At the most this passion-story can serve as an advertisement for the complete edition of my works for the benefit of Campe and my wife.' Léon Schücking, too, the novelist, also visited the sick poet at this time and has left a touching portrait of him. "The former glow of health had faded from his face, and given place to a fine waxen pallor; all his features had become fine -they were transfigured, spiritualised; it was a head of infinite beauty, a true Christ-head, which was turned towards me. Struck at this wonderful change, and even shocked, I said to myself that in the state in which he appeared to be he could not live six weeks more. And yet he lived full eight years.' Alfred Meissner, Kertbeny, and other friends from Germany, visited him in this year and have also left interesting portraits of him. : The cold of the past winter had increased still more the paralysis of the heart, so that his wheezing and sobbing were at times most painful to witness. He longed much, as he had done for years, to get away to the south, to Italy, but the state of his affairs would not admit of a journey which, to be of benefit to him, should enable him to pass the winter there for a mere temporary journey during the summer to some watering-place or to the sea, which he once enjoyed so much, his physical strength was not now sufficient, so he contented himself in 1847 with spending the summer months for a second time at a quiet maison de campagne at Montmorency. This was the last time that he quitted Paris, with the exception of a summer residence at Passy in the following year. Alfred Meissner has given a most charming sketch of a visit which he made to Heine at Montmorency and which he has included in his Erinnerungen,' which proves how strong was yet within him what he termed his indestructible Lebenslust, or delight in life, and with what wit and what gaiety of heart he still fought against the progress of his awful malady. CHAPTER XIII. LAZARUS IN THE SPIRIT. THE Revolution of 1848 took Heine, as it did the greater part of people, by surprise; although it had long been regarded as inevitable. M. Guizot, with unmoved countenance expressive of that superb obstinacy, arrogance and disdain so much admired by himself and his admirers, had long, with steady hand and imperturbable conceit, been steering the vessel of the State straight into Maelstrom. Baron Stockmar, the clearestsighted politician of his time, has left behind him an essay on the fall of the government of Louis Philippe, and the verdict which this wise observer passed on that event was that it was the necessary result of the persistent violation of the commonest doctrines of constitutional government by the French King and his ministers. In fact the Orleans dynasty which owed to revolution all the title it possessed to the crown of France, whose chiefs were not even the next heirs to the throne after Henry V., had with the course of years been giving themselves more and more the airs of hereditary right. The too cunning old Ulysses and his minister imagined that constitutional government could be rendered a mere form by corruption, or, if that failed, by force. The accursed self-confidence' of Louis Philippe, as it was called by the Prussian minister Count Arnim, would never have sufficed of itself to ruin the dynasty of Orleans or bring revolution upon France: it is to M. Guizot's policy, as responsible minister under a Government professedly constitutional, that the Revolution of 1848 must be ascriled. There are but two explanations possible of M. Guizot: either he was the most self-deceived sophist or he was the most pedantic hypocrite who has ever existed both in religion and politics. Baron Stockmar passed his final judgment on the man in these terms: 'I cannot endure him, yea I hate him heartily, since I ascribe to him the greater part of the blame which has brought about the catastrophe of Europe. I believe, as strongly as man can believe, that without Guizot's conceit, arrogance, frivolity, and want of knowledge of the world and of men, Louis Philippe would have died on the throne, and his descendants have been kings.' We have seen how Heine, since his last letter on that Guizot-corruption which was destined to be the gulf into which the monarchy of July was to sink, had ceased to occupy himself with French politics at all: nevertheless his blood leapt anew to the clang of the Marseillaise when it rang forth free and triumphant in February 1848, and the liberal enthusiasm of 1830 revived in him for a moment. But it was only for a moment: the poor poet was too sick in heart and body, the long process of disillusion had been too painful, for such warmth of hope to last long; and then the Marseillaise, chanted by myriads of victorious throats, as it was day after day, after the first intoxicating frenzy is over, is terribly exhausting to weak constitutions. Hence we are not surprised, however much we may regret it, to find Heine's old sceptical tone return in him after a few days. We find him on March 12th writing to Alfred Meissner: 'My feelings at this revolution, which has taken place under my eyes, you can easily represent to yourself. You know that I was no republican, and you will not be surprised that I have not become one now. The present striving and the present hopes of the world are fully strange to my heart; I bow to destiny because I am too weak to defy it, but I would not kiss the hem of its garment, not to make use of a coarse expression. That I |