ed Ferdinand to
his side, and, bidding him put his ear close to his mouth, he
whispered: 'Brother, what are they doing with me?' 'Dear Franz,' was
the reply, 'they are doing all they can to get you well again, and the
doctor assures us you will soon be all right, only you must do your
best to stay in bed.' For a space the sick man lay quiet, then, as the
delirium increased, his mind reverted to the same idea: 'I implore you
to put me in my own room, and not to leave me in this corner under the
earth. Don't I deserve a place above ground?' 'Dear Franz,' cried his
brother, 'be calm--trust your brother Ferdinand, whom you have always
trusted, and who loves you so dearly. You are in the room which you
always had, and lying on your own bed.' 'Ah, no,' replied the dying
composer, 'that cannot be true, for Beethoven is not here!' Thus in
his last moments his poor, wandering mind was dwelling upon the master
whom he reverenced; to be near him, even in death, was the last wish,
the last hope to which he clung!

When, later on, the doctor came, he tried to reassure the sufferer
with hopes of recovery; but Schubert gazed at him with earnestness
without speaking, and then, turning himself away, he beat the wall
with his hands, saying in slow, earnest tone: 'Here, here is my end,'
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day, November 19,
1828, he breathed his last. Thus passed away, in comparative youth, a
composer of whom it has been written: 'There never has been one like
him, and there never will be another.'

The funeral took place on November 21, and a large number of friends
gathered to pay their last respects to the dead composer as he lay in
his coffin, dressed in accordance with the prevailing custom, like a
hermit, with a crown of laurel about his brows. The poor old father,
still drudging as schoolmaster in the Rossau district, where he had
been labouring ever since he had left the old home in the
Himmelpfortgrund, would have buried his dear son in the cemetery near
at hand; but Ferdinand told him of Franz's last wish, and, like the
noble brother that he was, gave a sum out of his own scanty earnings
in order to defray the extra cost of removing the body to the
Waehringer burial-place. Thither, accordingly, it was taken, and
committed to the ground in a grave close to that occupied by the
master he loved so well. The monument which was erected over the grave
in the following year, by the efforts of his friend