at perhaps _dieser
Parvenu des Himmels_ was angry with Israel for reminding Him of his
former obscure national relations--what was it but a lively rendering
of what German savants said so unreadably about the evolution of the
God-Idea? But she felt also it would have been finer to bear unsmiling
the smileless destinies; not to affront with the tinkle of vain
laughter the vast imperturbable. She answered gently, "You are talking
nonsense."

"I always talked nonsense to you, little Lucy, for

'My heart is wise and witty
And it bleeds within my breast.'

Will you hear its melodious drip-drip, my last poem?--My manuscript,
Catherine; and then you can go take a nap. I am sure I gave you little
rest last night."

The old woman brought him some folio sheets covered with great
pathetically sprawling letters, and when she had retired, he began--

"Wie langsam kriechet sie dahin,
Die Zeit, die schauderhafte Schnecke...?"

His voice went on, but after the first lines the listener's brain was
too troubled to attend. It was agitated with whirling memories of
those earlier outcries throbbing with the passion of life, flaming
records of the days when every instant held not an eternity of
_ennui_, but of sensibility. "Red life boils in my veins.... Every
woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand
nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick
my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the
greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils...." But the poet
was still reading--she forced herself to listen.

"'Perhaps with ancient heathen shapes,
Old faded gods, this brain is full;
Who, for their most unholy rites,
Have chosen a dead poet's skull.'"

He broke off suddenly. "No, it is too sad. A cry in the night from a
man buried alive; a new note in German poetry--_was sage ich?_--in
the poetry of the world. No poet ever had such a lucky chance
before--_voyez-vous_--to survive his own death, though many a one has
survived his own immortality. Dici _miser_ ante obitum nemo
debet--call no man wretched till he's dead. 'Tis not till the journey
is over that one can see the perspective truthfully and the tombstones
of one's hopes and illusions marking the weary miles. 'Tis not till
one is dead that the day of judgment can dawn; and when one is dead
one cannot see or judge at all. An exquisite irony. _Nicht Wahr?_ The
wrecks in the Morgue, what tal