Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse
He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him each day, about two o'clock, sitting
beneath the hotel windows on a bench in the promenade, looking out on the calm sea. He
remained for some time without moving, in the heat of the sun, gazing mournfully at the
Mediterranean. Every now and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with
beclouded summits that shut in Mentone; then, with a very slow movement, he would
cross his long legs, so thin that they seemed like two bones, around which fluttered the
cloth of his trousers, and he would open a book, always the same book. And then he did
not stir any more, but read on, read on with his eye and his mind; all his wasting body
seemed to read, all his soul plunged, lost, disappeared, in this book, up to the hour when
the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up and reentered the hotel.
He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in his own room, and
spoke to nobody.
A vague, curiosity attracted me to him. One day, I sat down by his side, having taken up a
book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of Musset's poems.
And I began to look through "Rolla."
Suddenly, my neighbor said to me, in good French:
"Do you know German, monsieur?"
"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I could have lent you, I
could have shown you, an inestimable thing--this book which I hold in my hand."
"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand. All the margins,
as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."
I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me,
but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had
ever dwelt on earth.
And Musset's verses arose in my memory:
"Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"
