HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great
hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned
Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. i enjoyed the title
of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer
a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully
down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now
a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an
unhappy man."
Thus side by side flowed on the continuous streams
of that wit and pathos which he poured forth inexhaustibly
to the very end. No word of complaint or impatience
ever passed his lips; on the contrary, with his
old, irresistible humor, his fancy played about his own
privations and sufferings, and tried to alleviate for his
devoted wife and friends the pain of the heart-rending
spectacle. His delicate consideration prompted him to
spare his venerable mother all knowledge of his illness.
He wrote to her every month in his customary cheerful
way; and, in sending her the latest volumes of his
poetry, he caused a separate copy always to be printed,
from which all allusions to his malady were expunged.
"For that matter," he said, "that any son could be as
wretched and miserable as I, no mother would believe."
Alas! if he had known how much more eloquent and
noble a refutation his life would afford than his mistaken
passionate response to the imputations of his enemies!
Is this patient martyr the man of whom Borne wrote:
"with his sybarite nature, the fall of a rose-leaf can dis-
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