up a blank, it widens the sphere
of suffering. His brother described him in 1851 as still, in moments
when the hand of pain was not too heavy on him, the same Heinrich Heine,
poet and satirist by turns. In such moments he would narrate the
strangest things in the gravest manner. But when he came to an end, he
would roguishly lift up the lid of his right eye with his finger to see
the impression he had produced; and if his audience had been listening
with a serious face, he would break into Homeric laughter. We have other
proof than personal testimony that Heine's disease allows his genius to
retain much of its energy, in the "Romanzero," a volume of poems
published in 1851, and written chiefly during the three first years of
his illness; and in the first volume of the "Vermischte Schriften," also
the product of recent years. Very plaintive is the poet's own
description of his condition, in the epilogue to the "Romanzero:"

"Do I really exist? My body is so shrunken that I am hardly anything
but a voice; and my bed reminds me of the singing grave of the
magician Merlin, which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany,
under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven.
Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their
branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about my
mattress-grave in Paris, where early and late I hear nothing but the
rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. A
grave without repose, death without the privileges of the dead, who
have no debts to pay, and need write neither letters nor books--that
is a piteous condition. Long ago the measure has been taken for my
coffin and for my necrology, but I die so slowly that the process is
tedious for me as well as my friends. But patience: everything has
an end. You will one day find the booth closed where the puppet-show
of my humor has so often delighted you."

As early as 1850 it was rumored that since Heine's illness a change had
taken place in his religious views; and as rumor seldom stops short of
extremes, it was soon said that he had become a thorough pietist.
Catholics and Protestants by turns claiming him as a convert. Such a
change in so uncompromising an iconoclast, in a man who had been so
zealous in his negations as Heine, naturally excited considerable
sensation in the camp he was supposed to have quitted, as