impression which this strange being made on all who came
near him.

He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a glimpse
of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the midst of his
disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking
and tearing to pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a dog
tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.

He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
astonished and terrified: "I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."

Then he added:

"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even
after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it that is not
generally known, if it would interest you."

And he began, in a languid voice, interrupted by frequent fits of
coughing.

"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in
turn, two by two, till morning.

"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy. Two wax
candles were burning on the stand by the bedside.

"It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our comrades.
The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we came and
sat down at the foot of the bed.

"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew so
well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us
that he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak. His thought, or
rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more than ever in
the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him. His domination
seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead. A feeling of
mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.

"The bodies of these men disappear, but they themselves remain; and in
the night which follows the cessation of their heart's pulsation I assure
you, monsieur, they are terrifying.

"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like
jets of flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown
Life.

"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we
stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face, with its
eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed, on the
point of fainting