of
Israel, that he is a descendant of those martyrs to whom the world owes
God and morality, and who have fought and bled on every battlefield of
thought."

In view of such avowals, Heine's return to Judaism is an indubitable
fact, and when one of his friends anxiously inquired about his relation
to God, he could well answer with a smile: _Dieu me pardonnera; c'est
son metier._ In those days Heine made his will, his true, genuine will,
to have been the first to publish which the present writer will always
consider the distinction of his life. The introduction reads: "I die in
the belief in one God, Creator of heaven and earth, whose mercy I
supplicate in behalf of my immortal soul. I regret that in my writings I
sometimes spoke of sacred things with levity, due not so much to my own
inclination, as to the spirit of my age. If unwittingly I have offended
against good usage and morality, which constitute the true essence of
all monotheistic religions, may God and men forgive me."

With this confession on his lips Heine passed away, dying in the thick
of the fight, his very bier haunted by the spirits of antagonism and
contradiction....

"Greek joy in life, belief in God of Jew,
And twining in and out like arabesques,
Ivy tendrils gently clasp the two."

In Heine's character, certainly, there were sharp contrasts. Now we
behold him a Jew, now a Christian, now a Hellenist, now a romanticist;
to-day laughing, to-morrow weeping, to-day the prophet of the modern
era, to-morrow the champion of tradition. Who knows the man? Yet who
that steps within the charmed circle of his life can resist the
temptation to grapple with the enigma?

One of the best known of his poems is the plaint:

"Mass for me will not be chanted,
_Kadosh_ not be said,
Naught be sung, and naught recited,
Round my dying bed."

The poet's prophecy has not come true. As this tribute has in spirit
been laid upon his grave, so always thousands will devote kindly thought
to him, recalling in gentleness how he struggled and suffered, wrestled
and aspired; how, at the dawn of the new day, enthusiastically
proclaimed by him, his spirit fled aloft to regions where doubts are set
at rest, hopes fulfilled, and visions made reality.

THE MUSIC OF THE SYNAGOGUE[107]

Ladies and Gentlemen:--Let the emotions aroused by the notes of the
great masters, now dying away upon the air, continue to reverberate in
your souls. Mor