"But, the Deuse! where then is our dead man? what has the white cap to do down there? I see the corpse in the looking-glass opposite--it must be somewhere--I must fetch it":----with a shudder running through his soul he sprang down; an exalted frenzy passed, through the stages of tears, of smiles, of torpor, up and down his face. He ran behind a screen which had been placed before his wax statue--and brought out the waxen man--and threw him down as a corpse--and a veil was wound over the corpse--and with a distorted face he mounted the chair to proceed:-- "This is the night-corpse,--the scorified, carbonized man,--into such stiff lumps are conscious beings fastened and compelled to turn them round. Why do you tremble at me, hearers, because I tremble, to stare so at this overturned form of humanity?--I see a spectre hover round this corpse which is an 'I.' ... I! I! thou precipice that in the mirror of thought runnest back deep down into the darkness,--I! thou mirror within the mirror,--thou terror within a terror! Draw the veil away from the corpse! I will boldly look on the dead, till he destroys me." Every one shuddered in response; but one of the Englishmen drew aside the veil from the dead.... Rigid, speechless, horror-struck and quaking, Victor looked upon the unveiled face, which also in a living shape hung round his soul; but at last tears gushed out down his cold cheeks, and then he spoke in a lower tone, as if his heart were melting:-- "See how the corpse smiles! why, then, dost thou smile so, Sebastian? Wast thou perchance so happy on the earth, that thy mouth stiffened and grew cold in a rapture of delight?... No, happy thou canst scarcely have been,--joy itself was often to thee a seed-vessel of sorrow. And thou saidst thyself very often, I am well contented and deserve hardly my hopes and wishes, to say nothing of their fulfilment.---- "Flamin! look upon this assumed countenance here,--it smiles from friendship, not from joy. Flamin, this extinct breast was arched over a heart that loved thee without limit, and even unto death. "And this, after all, is the only misfortune of the poor man now at rest. In and for himself, and so far as concerned his original condition and temper, the good Bastian might have fared well enough; but he was too sensitive for joy,--too inconsiderate,--too ardent,--almost too much a child of fantasy. He wanted even to love (during his lifetime), and it could not be done. The flower-goddess of love passed by him, she denied him the transfiguration of man, the melodrama of the heart, the golden age of life.... Cold form, erect thyself, and show men the tears that flow from a tender heart, which breaks for love and finds none!...