"Can it be supposed that thy soul, deceased Sebastian, in its intermediate state after death, should know anything of its body, from which it is unpacked, as out of its hat-box, and of the last honors which we here pay to its case? If it still has consciousness and an eye for this room, wherein it has been so often, then will it be glad that the three holy kings, of whom the Moor is Cato the Elder, are standing round its worm-bag, hardly willing to let the bag go; it must be pleased, that we are unitedly lamenting: where is his equal in common chemistry, in physiognomies and physiognomy,--in the modern languages,--in the _doctrine of ribbons_, from which he imbibed a love for all kinds of ribbons? Who sought less than he that strict concatenation of ideas, which misleads the Germans to cement good ones with bad ones, and to use more mortar than stones? Not even the Court--hence he never liked to go thither, when fun was going forward--could break him off from a certain serious sedate way, which he ran even into a ridiculous one, which last was always his aim.----By heaven! through the hour-glass of death, through which he peeped, as through a pocket spyglass, everything came out so small to him, that he knew not why he should be serious--I hope I may not be standing here alive and well, if in the aforesaid glass all the _steps_ of the throne did not appear to him as diminutive as the thumb-long _wood-stair_ of the tree-frog in his preserving jar. "He was a very good preacher, particularly of funeral sermons, hence even a very good preacher asked him for godfather, and the godson stands among the present company and takes his part in the weeping, for the stomach-ache.... Only great court preachers, who deliver the princely funeral oration in the Cathedral Church, can boast of what I, to my greatest satisfaction, now hear, that they make the mourning company laugh, and this is to me an earnest that my consolation is effectual.... "And yet one who lies upon the death-bed has more consolation than one who only stands at the foot of the bed. The souterrain of the earth's crust is peopled only by still, reposing human beings, who draw close together; but above the souterrain stand their uneasy friends, and long to go down to the beloved arms of dust; for the linen on the eye of the dead is truly a padded hat for the cold brow, the coffin is a parachute to the unhappy, and the winding-sheet the last bandage of the widest wounds. Ah! why does weary man love better to sink into the short than into the long, undisturbed, sure sleep? Take, then, good Sebastian, the death-certificate as an eternal peace-instrument from the hand of gentle nature....