Narrative and Miscellaneous PapersDe Quincey, Thomas
General
Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays; English fiction
About ten o'clock in the forenoon he suffered a remarkable change; his
eye was rigid and his face and lips became discolored by a cadaverous
pallor. Still, such was the effect of his previous habits, that no trace
appeared of the cold sweat which naturally accompanies the last mortal
agony.
It was near eleven o'clock when the moment of dissolution approached.
His sister was standing at the foot of the bed, his sister's son at
the head. I, for the purpose of still observing the fluctuations of the
pulse in his hip, was kneeling at the bed-side; and I called his servant
to come and witness the death of his good master. Now began the last
agony, if to him it could be called an agony, where there seemed to be
no struggle. And precisely at this moment, his distinguished friend, Mr.
R. R. V., whom I had summoned by a messenger, entered the room. First of
all, the breath grew feebler; then it missed its regularity of return;
then it wholly intermitted, and the upper lip was slightly convulsed;
after this there followed one slight respiration or sigh; and after that
no more; but the pulse still beat for a few seconds--slower and fainter,
till it ceased altogether; the mechanism stopped; the last motion was at
an end; and exactly at that moment the clock struck eleven.
Soon after his death the head of Kant was shaved; and, under the
direction of Professor Knorr, a plaster cast was taken, not a masque
merely, but a cast of the whole bead, designed (I believe) to enrich the
craniological collection of Dr. Gall.
The corpse being laid out and properly attired, immense numbers of
people of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, flocked to see it.
Everybody was anxious to make use of the last opportunity he would have
for entitling himself to say--'I too have seen Kant.' This went on for
many days--during which, from morning to night, the house was thronged
with the public. Great was the astonishment of all people at the
meagreness of Kant's appearance; and it was universally agreed that a
corpse so wasted and fleshless had never been beheld. His head rested
upon the same cushion on which once the gentlemen of the university had
presented an address to him; and I thought that I could not apply it to
a more honorable purpose than by placing it in the coffin, as the final
pillow of that immortal head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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