“_Armes Kind_,” Albert murmured affectionately.
She paused. Marguerite, overdressed and overperfumed—large hipped and full-breasted, with rouged fleshy cheeks—came to bid Albert goodbye. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead but he made no attempt to raise his eyelid. He only murmured _au revoir_, and as he turned his face to one side a deep sadness flitted across his cadaverous cheeks. As Marguerite turned to leave, she turned around and gave the young girl a quizzical look.
When the outside door closed the invalid stretched out his hand toward his visitor and she replaced her hand into his.
“_Du letzte Blume meines larmoyanten Herbstes_,” he murmured, caressing her hand.
A moment later he added, “You won’t leave me now, since you have at last appeared, my last ray of sunshine. All my friends have left me—all—” There was a checked sob in his breast.
“Never, never, never!—” There were tears in her voice.
“Don’t cry, _holdes Herz_, life is a comedy, and death its final scene. Last night I dreamt I was dead and hugely enjoyed the ceremony of my burial.”
He gave a soft laugh and his bloodless lips puckered like those of a pouting child.
“They laid me in a gorgeous mausoleum of costly marble, and the walls were bas reliefs of grotesque scenes, sacred and profane—all the utterances of my whole life seemed illustrated on those walls. When they lowered my coffin I began to laugh and could not stop laughing even when they screwed on the lid. Then all of a sudden, as if by magic, I noticed a dark-blue flower spring from the ground at the foot of my tomb. It looked like a passion flower from which were suspended all the instruments of torture used during the Inquisition in Spain. All at once the passion flower assumed human form; it was a living being; it had the sweet face of a charming young woman; a sweet, sad face, full of tenderness and love, was leaning over my dead body. I stared in amazement. It was your sweet countenance, _liebstes Kind_, and hot burning tears were dripping from your eyes and falling upon my dead face. Ah, these dreams! Since the earliest recollections of my childhood I have always been dreaming—my days and nights were veritably different existences. So, you see, I have really lived longer than most men. You must multiply my age by two. I have long passed the century mark. Yes, indeed, I am a centenarian.”