now he
turns round again and bids me order my coffin. But I fear, despite his
latest bulletin, I shall go on some time yet increasing my knowledge
of spinal disease. I read all the books about it, as well as
experiment practically. What clinical lectures I will give in heaven,
demonstrating the ignorance of doctors!"

She was glad to note the more genial _nuance_ of mockery. Raillery
vibrated almost in the very tones of his voice, which had become clear
and penetrating under the stimulus of her presence, but it passed away
in tenderness, and the sarcastic wrinkles vanished from the corners of
his mouth as he made the pathetic jest anent his wife.

"So you read as well as write," she said.

"Oh, well, De Zichlinsky, a nice young refugee, does both for me most
times. My mother, poor old soul, wrote the other day to know why I
only signed my letters, so I had to say my eyes pained me, which was
not so untrue as the rest of the letter."

"Doesn't she know?"

"Know? God bless her, of course not. Dear old lady, dreaming so
happily at the Dammthor, too old and wise to read newspapers. No, she
does not know that she has a dying son, only that she has an undying!
_Nicht Wahr?_"

He looked at her with a shade of anxiety; that tragic anxiety of the
veteran artist scenting from afar the sneers of the new critics at his
life-work, and morbidly conscious of his hosts of enemies.

"As long as the German tongue lives."

"Dear old Germany," he said, pleased. "Yes, as I wrote to you, for
_you_ are the _liebe Kleine_ of the poem,

'Nennt man die besten Namen,
So wird auch der meine genannt.'"

She was flattered, but thought sadly of the sequel:

"'Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,
So wird auch der meine genannt'"

as he went on:--

"That was why, though the German censorship forbade or mutilated my
every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul, I would not
become naturalized here. Paris has been my new Jerusalem, and I
crossed my Jordan at the Rhine; but as a French subject I should be
like those two-headed monstrosities they show at the fairs. Besides, I
hate French poetry. What measured glitter! Not that German poetry has
ever been to me more than a divine plaything. A laurel-wreath on my
grave, place or withhold, I care not; but lay on my coffin a sword,
for I was as brave a soldier as your Canning in the Liberation War of
Humanity. But my Thirty Years' War is over, and I die 'with sword
u