And ever swifter grows the beat of time's wing. My breath can no longer keep the same pace.

Thoughtless enjoyment of life has long yielded to a life and death struggle.

And I am conquered.

Wretchedness and want have robbed me of my grasping courage and of my laughing defiance. The body is sick and the soul droops its wings.

* * * * *

Midnight approaches. The smoky lamp burns more dimly and outside on the streets life begins to die out. Only from time to time the snow crunches and groans under the hurrying foot of some belated and freezing passer-by. The reflection of the gas lamps rests upon the frozen windows as though a yellow veil had been drawn before them.

In the room hovers a dull heat which weighs upon my brain and even amid shivering wrings the sweat from my pores.

I had the fire started again toward night for I was cold. Now I am no longer cold.

"Take care of yourself," my friend the doctor said to me, "you have worked yourself to pieces and must rest."

"Rest, rest"—the word sounds like a gnome's irony from all the corners of my room, for my work is heaping up on all sides and threatens to smother me.

"Work! Work!" This is the voice of conscience. It is like the voice of a brutal waggoner that would urge a dead ass on to new efforts.

My paper is in its place. For hours I have sat and stared at it brooding. It is still empty.

A disagreeably sweetish odour which arises impudently to my nose makes me start.

There stands the pitcher of herb tea which my landlady brought in at bedtime.

The dear woman.

"Man must sweat," she had declared. "If the whole man gets into a sweat then the evil humours are exuded, and the healthy sap gets a chance to circulate until one is full of it."

And saying that she wiped her greasy lips for she likes to eat a piece of rye bread with goose grease before going to bed.

Irritatedly I push the little pitcher aside, but its grayish green steam whirls only the more pertinaciously about me. The clouds assume strange forms, which tower over each other and whirl into each other like the phantoms over a witch's cauldron.

And at last the fumes combine into a human form, at first misty and without outlines but gradually becoming more sharply defined.

Gray, gray, gray. An aged woman. So she seems, for she creeps along by the help of a crutch. But over her face is a veil which falls to the ground over her arms like the folded wings of a bat.

I begin to laugh, for spirits have long ceased to inspire me with reverence.

"Is your name by any chance Thea, O lovely, being?" I ask.

"My name is Thea," she answers and her voice is weary, gentle and a little hoarse. A caressing shimmer as of faintly blue velvet, an insinuating fragrance as of dying mignonette—both lie in this voice. The voice fills my heart. But I won't be taken in, least of all by some trite ghost which is in the end only a vision of one's own sick brain.

"It seems that the years have not changed you for the better, charming
Thea," I say and point sarcastically to the crutch.

"My wings are broken and I am withered like yourself."

I laugh aloud. "So that is the meaning of this honoured apparition! A mirror of myself—spirit of ruin—symbolic poem on the course of my ideas. Pshaw! I know that trick. Every brainless Christmas poet knows it, too. You must come with a more powerful charm, O Thea, spirit of the herb tea! Good-bye. My time is too precious to be wasted by allegories."

"What have you to do that is so important?" she asks, and I seem to see the gleam of her eyes behind the folds of the veil, whether in laughter or in grief I cannot tell.

"If I have nothing more to do, I must die," I answer and feel with joy how my defiance steels itself in these words.

"And that seems important to you?"

"Moderately so."

"Important to whom?"

"To myself, I should think, if to no one else."

"And your creditor—the world?"

That was the last straw. "The world, oh, yes, the world. And what, pray, do I owe it?"

"Love."

"Love? To that harlot? Because it sucked the fire from my veins and poured poison therein instead? Behold me here—wrecked, broken, a plaything of any wave. That is what the world has made of me!"

"That is what you have made of yourself! … The world came to you as a smiling guide…. With gentle finger it touched your shoulder and desired you to follow. But you were stubborn. You went your own way in dark and lonely caverns where the laughing music of the fight that sounds from above becomes a discordant thunder. You were meant to be wise and merry; you became dull and morose."

"Very well; if that is what I became, at least the grave will release me from my condition."

"Test yourself thoroughly."

"What is the use of that now? Life has crippled me…. What of joy it has to offer becomes torture to me…. I am cut loose from all the kindly bonds that bind man to man…. I cannot bear hatred, neither can I bear love…. I tremble at a thousand dangers that have never threatened and will never threaten me. A very straw has become a cliff to me against which I founder and against which my weary limbs are dashed in pieces…. And this is the worst of all. My vision sees clearly that it is but a straw before which my strength writhes in the dust…. You have come at the right time, Thea. Perhaps you carry in the folds of your robe some little potion that will help me to hurry across the verge."

Again I see a gleam behind the veil—a smiling salutation from some far land where the sun is still shining. And my heart seems about to burst under that gleam. But I control myself and continue to gaze at her with bitter defiance.

"It needs no potion," she says and raises her right hand. I have never seen such a hand…. It seem to be without bones, formed of the petals of flowers. The hand might seem deformed, dried and yet swollen as with disease, were it not so delicate, so radiant, so lily-like. An unspeakable yearning for this poor, sick hand overcomes me. I want to fall on my knees before it and press my lips to it in adoration. But already the hand lays itself softly upon my hair. Gentle and cool as a flake of snow it rests there. But from moment to moment it waxes heavier until the weight of mountains seems to lie upon my head. I can bear the pressure no longer. I sink … I sink … the earth opens…. Darkness is all about me….

Recovering consciousness, I find myself lying in a bed surrounded by impenetrable night.

"One of my stupid dreams," I say to myself and grope for the matches on my bed side table to see the time…. But my hand strikes hard against a board that rises diagonally at my shoulder. I grope farther and discover that my couch is surrounded by a cloak of wood. And that cloak is so narrow, so narrow that I can scarcely raise my head a few inches without knocking against it.

"Perhaps I am buried," I say to myself. "Then indeed my wish would have fulfilled itself promptly."

A fresh softly prickling scent of flowers, as of heather and roses, floats to me.

"Aha," I say to myself, "the odour of the funeral flowers. My favourites have been chosen. That was kind of people." And, as I turn my head the cups of flowers nestle soft and cool against my cheek.

"You are buried amid roses," I say to myself, "as you always desired." And then I touch my breast to discover what gift has been placed upon my heart. My fingers touch hard, jagged leaves.

"What is that?" I ask myself in surprise. And then I laugh shrilly. It is a wreath of laurel leaves which has been pressed with its rough, woodlike leaves between my body and the coffin lid.

"Now you have everything that you so ardently desired, you fool of fame," I cry out and a mighty irony takes hold of me.

And then I stretch out my legs until my feet reach the end of the coffin, nestle my head amid the flowers, and make ready to enjoy my great peace with all my might. I am not in the least frightened or confounded, for I know that air to breathe will never again be lacking now for I need it no longer. I am dead, properly and honestly dead. Nothing remains now but to flow peacefully and gently into the realm of the unconscious, and to let the dim dream of the All surge over me to eternity.

"Good-night, my dear former fellow-creatures," I say and turn contemptuously on my other side. "You can all go to the dickens for all I care."

And then I determine to lie still as a mouse and discover whether I cannot find some food for the malice that yet is in me, by listening to man's doings upon the wretched earth above me.

At first I hear nothing but a dull roaring. But that may proceed as well from the subterranean waters that rush through the earth somewhere in my neighbourhood. But no, the sound comes from above. And from time to time I also hear a rattling and hissing as of dried peas poured out over a sieve.

"Of course, it's wretched weather again," I say and rub my hands comfortably, not, to be sure, without knocking my elbows against the side of the coffin.

"They could have made this place a little roomier," I say to myself. But when it occurs to me that, in my character of an honest corpse, I have no business to move at all if I want to be a credit to my new station.

But the spirit of contradiction in me at once rebels against this imputation.

"There are no classes in the grave and no prejudices," I cry. "In the grave we are all alike, high and low, poor and rich. The rags of the beggar, my masters, have here just the same value as the purple cloak that falls from the shoulders of a king. Here even the laurel loses its significance as the crown of fame and is given to many a one."

I cease, for my fingers have discovered a riband that hangs from the wreath. Upon it, I am justified in assuming, there is written some flattering legend. The letters are just raised enough to be indistinctly felt.

I am about to call for matches, but remember just in time that it is forbidden to strike a light in the grave or rather, that it is contrary to the very conception of the grave to be illuminated.

This thought annoys me and I continue: "The laurel is given here not to the distinguished alone. I must correct that expression. Are not we corpses distinguished per se as compared to the miserable plebeian living? Is not this noble rest in which we dwell an unmistakable sign of true aristocracy? And the laurel that is given to the dead, that laurel, my masters, fills me with as high a pride as would the diadem of a king."

I ceased. For I could rightly expect enthusiastic applause at the close of this effective passage. But as everything remained silent I turned my thoughts once more upon myself, and considered, too, that my finest speeches would find no public here.

"It is, besides, in utter contradiction to the conception of death to deliver speeches," I said to myself, but at once I began another in order to establish an opposition against myself.

"Conception? What is a conception? What do I care for conceptions here? I am dead. I have earned the sacred right to disregard such things. If those two-penny living creatures cannot imagine the grave otherwise than dark or the dead otherwise than dumb—why, I surely have no need to care for that."

In the meantime my fingers had scratched about on the riband in the vain hope of inferring from the gilt and raised letters on the silk their form and perhaps the significance of the legend. My efforts were, however, without success. Hence I continued outraged: "In order to speak first of the conception of the grave as dark, I should like to ask any intelligent and expert corpse: 'Why is the grave necessarily dark?' Should not we who are dead rather demand of an age that has made such enormous progress in illumination, which has not only invented gas and electric lighting and complied with the regulations for the illumination of streets, but has at a slight cost succeeded in giving to every corner of the world the very light of day—may we not demand of such an age that it put an end to the old-fashioned darkness of the grave? It would seem as if the most elementary piety would constrain the living to this improvement. But when did the living ever feel any piety? We must enforce from them the necessaries of a worthy existence in death. Gentlemen, I close with the last, or, I had better say, the first words of our great Goethe whose genius with characteristic power of divination foresaw the unworthy condition of the inner grave and the necessities of a truly noble and liberal minded corpse. For what else could be the meaning of that saying which I herewith inscribe upon our banner: 'Light, more light!' That must henceforth be our device and our battlecry."

This time, too, silence was my only answer. Whence I inferred that in the grave there is neither striving nor crying out. Nevertheless I continued to amuse myself and made many a speech against the management of the cemetery, against the insufficiency of the method of flat pressure upon the dead now in use, and similar outrages. In the meantime the storm above had raged and the rain lashed its fill and a peaceful silence descended upon all things.

Only from time to time did I hear a short, dull uniform thunder, which I could not account for until it occurred to me that it was produced by the footsteps of passers-by, the noise of which was thus echoed and multiplied in the earth.

And then suddenly I heard the sound of human voices.

The sound came vertically down to my head.

People seemed to be standing at my grave.

"Much I care about you," I said, and was about to continue to reflect on my epoch-making invention which is to be called: Helminothanatos,' that is to say, 'Death by Worms' and which, so soon as it is completed is to be registered in the patent office as number 156,763. But my desire to know what was thought of me after my death left me no rest. Hence I did not hesitate long to press my ear to the inner roof of the coffin in order that the sound might better reach me thus.

Now I recognised the voices at once.

They belonged to two men to whom I had always been united by bonds of the tenderest sympathy and whom I was proud to call my friends. They had always assured me of the high value which they set upon me and that their blame—with which they had often driven me to secret despair—proceeded wholly from helpful and unselfish love.

"Poor devil," one of them said, in a tone of such humiliating compassion that I was ashamed of myself in the very grave.

"He had to bite the dust pretty early," the other sighed. "But it was better so both for him and for myself. I could not have held him above water much longer." …

From sheer astonishment I knocked my head so hard against the side of the coffin that a bump remained.

"When did you ever hold me above water?" I wanted to cry out but I considered that they could not hear me.

Then the first one spoke again.

"I often found it hard enough to aid him with my counsel without wounding his vanity. For we know how vain he was and how taken with himself."

"And yet he achieved little enough," the other answered. "He ran after women and sought the society of inferior persons for the sake of their flattery. It always astonished me anew when he managed to produce something of approximately solid worth. For neither his character nor his intelligence gave promise of it."

"In your wonderful charity you are capable of finding something excellent even in his work," the other replied. "But let us be frank: The only thing he sometimes succeeded in doing was to flatter the crude instincts of the mob. True earnestness or conviction he never possessed."

"I never claimed either for him," the first eagerly broke in. "Only I didn't want to deny the poor fellow that bit of piety which is demanded. De mortuis——"

And both voices withdraw into the distance.

"O you grave-robbers!" I cried and shook my fist after them. "Now I know what your friendship was worth. Now it is clear to me how you humiliated me upon all my ways, and how when I came to you in hours of depression you administered a kick in order that you might increase in stature at my expense! Oh, if I could only."…

I ceased laughing.

"What silly wishes, old boy!" I admonished myself. "Even if you could master your friends; your enemies would drive you into the grave a thousand times over."

And I determined to devote my whole thought henceforth to the epoch-making invention of my impregnating fluid called "Helminothanatos" or "Death by Worms."

But new voices roused me from my meditation.

I listened.

"That's where what's his name is buried," said one.

"Quite right," said the other. "I gave him many a good hit while he was among us—more than I care to think about to-day. But he was an able fellow. His worst enemy couldn't deny that."

I started and shuddered.

I knew well who he was: my bitterest opponent who tortured me so long with open lashes and hidden stabs that I almost ended by thinking I deserved nothing else.

And he had a good word to say for me—he?

His voice went on. "To-day that he is out of our way we may as well confess that we always liked him a great deal. He took life and work seriously and never used an indecent weapon against us. And if the tactics of war had not forced us to represent his excellences as faults, we might have learned a good deal from him."

"It's a great pity," said the other. "If, before everything was at sixes and sevens, he could have been persuaded to adopt our views, we could perhaps have had the pleasure of receiving him into our fighting lines."

"With open arms," was the answer. And then in solemn tone:

"Peace be to his ashes."

The other echoed: "Peace …"

And then they went on….

I hid my face in my hands. My breast seemed to expand and gently, very gently something began to beat in it which had rested in silent numbness since I lay down here.

"So that is the nature of the world's judgment," I said to myself. "I should have known that before. With head proudly erect I would have gone my way, uninfluenced by the glitter of false affection as by the blindness of wildly aiming hatred. I would have shaken praise and blame from me with the same joyous laugh and sought the norm of achievement in myself alone. Oh, if only I could live once more! If only there were a way out of these accursed six boards!"

In impotent rage I pounded the coffin top with my fist and only succeeded in running a splinter into my finger.

And then there came over me once more, even though it came hesitatingly and against my will, a delightful consciousness of that eternal peace into which I had entered.

"Would it be worth the trouble after all," I said to myself, "to return to the fray once more, even if I were a thousand times certain of victory? What is this victory worth? Even if I succeed in being the first to mount some height untrod hitherto by any human foot, yet the next generation will climb on my shoulders and hurl me down into the abysm of oblivion. There I could lie, lonely and helpless, until the six boards are needed again to help me to my happiness. And so let me be content and wait until that thing in my breast which has began to beat so impudently, has become quiet once more."

I stretched myself out, folded my hands, and determined to hold no more incendiary speeches and thus counteract the trade of the worms, but rather to doze quietly into the All.

Thus I lay again for a space.

Then arose somewhere a strange musical sound, which penetrated my dreamy state but partially at first before it awakened me wholly from my slumber.

What was that? A signal of the last day?

"It's all the same to me," I said and stretched myself. "Whether it's heaven or hell—it will be a new experience."

But the sound that had awakened me had nothing in common with the metallic blare of trumpets which religious guides have taught us to expect.

Gentle and insinuating, now like the tones of flutes played by children, now like the sobbing of a girl's voice, now like the caressing sweetness with which a mother speaks to her little child—so infinitely manifold but always full of sweet and yearning magic—alien and yet dear and familiar—such was the music that came to my ear.

"Where have I heard that before?" I asked myself, listening.

And as I thought and thought, an evening of spring arose before my soul—an evening out of a far and perished time…. I had wandered along the bank of a steaming river. The sunset which shone through the jagged young leaves spread a purple carpet over the quiet waters upon which only a swift insect would here and there create circular eddies. At every step I took the dew sprang up before me in gleaming pearls, and a fragrance of wild thyme and roses floated through the air….

There it must have been that I heard this music for the first time.

And now it was all clear: The nightingale was singing … the nightingale.

And so spring has come to the upper world.

Perhaps it is an evening of May even as that which my spirit recalls.

Blue flowers stand upon the meadows…. Goldenrod and lilac mix their blossoms into gold and violet wreaths…. Like torn veils the delicate flakings of the buttercups fly through the twilight….

Surely from the village sounds the stork's rattle … and surely the distant strains of an accordion are heard….

But the nightingale up there cares little what other music may be made. It sobs and jubilates louder and louder, as if it knew that in the poor dead man's bosom down here the heart beats once more stormily against his side.

And at every throb of that heart a hot stream glides through my veins. It penetrates farther and farther until it will have filled my whole body. It seems to me as though I must cry out with yearning and remorse. But my dull stubbornness arises once more: "You have what you desired. So lie here and be still, even though you should be condemned to hear the nightingale's song until the end of the world."

The song has grown much softer.

Obviously the human steps that now encircle my grave with their sullen resonance have driven the bird to a more distant bush.

"Who may it be," I ask myself, "that thinks of wandering to my place of rest on an evening of May when the nightingales are singing."

And I listen anew. It sounds almost as though some one up there were weeping.

Did I not go my earthly road lonely and unloved? Did I not die in the house of a stranger? Was I not huddled away in the earth by strangers? Who is it that comes to weep at my grave?

And each one of the tears that is shed above there falls glowing upon my breast….

And my breast rises in a convulsive struggle but the coffin lid pushes it back. I strain my head against the wood to burst it, but it lies upon me like a mountain. My body seems to burn. To protect it I burrow in the saw-dust which fills mouth and eyes with its biting chaff.

I try to cry out but my throat is paralysed.

I want to pray but instead of thoughts the lightnings of madness shoot through my brain.

I feel only one thing that threatens to dissolve all my body into a stream of flame and that penetrates my whole being with immeasurable might: "I must live … live…!"

There, in my sorest need, I think of the faery who upon my desire brought me by magic to my grave.

"Thea, I beseech you. I have sinned against the world and myself. It was cowardly and slothful to doubt of life so long as a spark of life and power glowed in my veins. Let me arise, I beseech you, from the torments of hell—let me arise!"

And behold: the boards of the coffin fall from me like a wornout garment. The earth rolls down on both sides of me and unites beneath me in order to raise my body.

I open my eyes and perceive myself to be lying in dark grass. Through the bent limbs of trees the grave stars look down upon me. The black crosses stand in the evening glow, and past the railings of grave-plots my eyes blink out into the blossoming world.

The crickets chirp about me in the grass, and the nightingale begins to sing anew.

Half dazed I pull myself together.

Waves of fragrance and melting shadows extend into the distance.

Suddenly I see next to me on the grave mound a crouching gray figure. Between a veil tossed back I see a countenance, pallid and lovely, with smooth dark hair and a madonna-like face. About the softly smiling mouth is an expression of gentle loftiness such as is seen in those martyrs who joyfully bleed to death from the mightiness of their love.

Her eyes look down upon me in smiling peace, clear and soulful, the measure of all goodness, the mirror of all beauty.

I know the dark gleam of those eyes, I know that gray, soft veil, I know that poor sick hand, white as a blossom, that leans upon a crutch.

It is she, my faery, whose tears have awakened me from the dead.

All my defiance vanishes.

I lie upon the earth before her and kiss the hem of her garment.

And she inclines her head and stretches her hand out to me.

With the help of that hand I arise.

Holding this poor, sick hand, I stride joyfully back into life.