But alas! the wild months of dissipation before he had met
Mathilde were before long to be paid for by that long, excruciating
suffering which is one of the most heroic spectacles in the history
of literature. It is the paradox of the mocker that he often
displays the virtues and sentiments which he mocks, much more
manfully than the professional sentimentalist. Courage and laughter
are old friends, and Heine's laughter--his later laughter, at
least--was perhaps mostly courage. If for no other reason, one would
hope for a hereafter--so that Charles II and Heine may have met and
compared notes upon dying. Heine was indeed an "unconscionable long
time a-dying," but then he died with such brilliant patience, with
such good humour, and, in the meanwhile, contrived to write such
haunting poetry, such saturnine criticism.
And, all the time, during those ten years of dying, his faithful
"Treasure" was by his side. The people who "understood" him better,
who read his books and delighted in his genius, somehow or other
seemed to forget the lonely Prometheus on the mattress-rock at No.
3 Avenue Matignon. It was 1854 when Heine was painfully removed
there. It was so long ago as the May of 1848 that he had walked out
for the last time. His difficult steps had taken him to the Louvre,
and, broken in body and nerves--but never in spirit--he had burst
into tears before the Venus of Milo. It was a characteristic
pilgrimage--though it was only a "Mouche" who could have taken Heine
seriously when he said that he loved only statues and dead women.
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