representations of it.--A being breaks up into as many million beings as it has thoughts,--memory is merely consciousness of present existence."[150]--Even the Poet philosophizes at least for poetry and against philosophy.--Victor thought: "Thou good man! to myself, not to thee, I made these objections." It was towards noon; the sky was clear, but sultry; the flowers announced by their shutting up the gathering of the electric fires; all meadows were altars of incense, and fragrances went forth as prophets of the storm-clouds. With the _physical_ stormy material there accumulated in Victor a corresponding _moral_ element;--he reflected that often a hot day ended the life of consumptive patients;--he confounded at times the _bitterness_ of parting with its _probability_; for man, deceived by the _aerial perspective_ of fear, fancies a shape of terror so much the _nearer_, the _larger_ it is; he wept at the very thought that he might weep; but nevertheless reason would have held the upperhand of the feelings, had not the following occurrence benumbed both. In Maienthal there dwelt a madman whom they called by no other name than that of the crazy skeleton. For three reasons he was called so: first, because he was an anatomical preparation of leanness; secondly, because he carried round the fixed idea, that Death was after him and wanted to seize and abduct him by the left hand, which he therefore concealed; thirdly, because he gave out that he could see when any one was going to die soon by the look of the face, which in that case was already overspread with the indentations and abscesses of corruption. In Moritz's experimental psychology[151] a similar man is described, who is also said to be able to detect the forerunners of death and its triturating hand on faces which appear to others smooth and ruddy, whereas he sees them seamed with the lunar caustic of corruption.--This skeleton it was, which, on the night of the fourth Whitsuntide day, when Clotilda was in the churchyard, cried out, Death! I am already buried.[152]--Victor and Emanuel went home during the striking of the twelfth hour, and on their way passed a hill, whereon the skeleton sat agitated; the left hand, at which Death grasped, buried itself deep into the opposite arm-pit: "Brrr!" it said, shaking its head at Emanuel, "he has thee, but not me! Nothing but mould is hanging on thee! The eyes are gone! Brr!"