"But death came at last in an appalling shape." "Yes; his forty-sixth birth day found him sitting at home in his arm-chair, with his friends around him. But the rare old wine,--he always drank the best,--touched not the sick-man's lips that night. His wonted humor was gone. Of all his 'jibes, his gambols, his songs, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar, not one now, to mock his own grinning!--quite chap-fallen.'--The conversation was of death and the grave. And when one of his friends said, that life was not the highest good, Hoffmann interrupted him, exclaiming with a startling earnestness; 'No, no! Life, life, only life! on any condition whatsoever!' Five months after this he had ceased to suffer, because he had ceased to live. He died piecemeal. His feet and hands, his legs and arms, gradually, and in succession, became motionless, dead. But his spirit was not dead, nor motionless; and, through the solitary day or sleepless night, lying in his bed, he dictated to an amanuensis his last stories. Strange stories, indeed, were they for a dying man to write! Yet such delight did he take in dictating them, that he said to his friend Hitzig, that, upon the whole, he was willing to give up forever the use of his hands, if he could but preserve the power of writing by dictation. Such was his love of life,--of what he called the sweet habitude of being!" "Was it not he, who in his last hours expressed such a longing to behold the green fields once more; and exclaimed; 'Heaven! it is already summer, and I have not yet seen a single green tree!' " "Yes, that was Hoffmann. Soon afterwards he died. The closing scene was striking. He gradually lost all sensation, though his mind remained vigorous. Feeling no more pain, he said to his physician; 'It will soon be over now. I feel no more pain.' He thought himself well again; but the physician knew that he was dying, and said; 'Yes, it will soon be over!' The next morning he called his wife to his bed-side; and begged her to fold his motionless hands together. Then, as he raised his eyes to heaven, she heard him say, 'We must, then, think of God, also!' More sorrowful words than these have seldom fallen from the lips of man. Shortly afterwards the flame of life glared up within him; he said he was well again; that in the evening he should go on with the story he was writing; and wished that the last sentence might be read over to him. Shortly after this they turned his face to the wall, and he died."