On the 17th February, 1856, Henry Heine was at length released from his sufferings in his house in the Avenue Matignon, No. 3, as appears from the obituary notice. The smallness of the attendance at his funeral would seem to show that there was some truth in the saying that he had many admirers but few friends. The only names of note that are recorded as having been present on the occasion are Mignet, Gautier, and Dumas. And this was the man who was recognized as the successor of Goethe in the throne of poetry in Germany, and whose songs were already household words in all parts of that country! His humour did not leave him till the very last. A few days before his death Hector Berlioz called on him just as a tiresome German professor was leaving the room after wearying him with his uninteresting conversation. “I am afraid you will find me very stupid, my dear fellow! The fact is, I have just been _exchanging thoughts_ with Dr. ----” was his remark. Only a day or two before he expired, he sent back to the printer the last proofs of a new edition of the “Reisebilder.”
Heine left a singular will behind him, in which he begged that all religious solemnities should be dispensed with at his funeral, and that, although he called himself a Lutheran, no Lutheran minister should officiate on the occasion. He added that this was not a mere freak of a freethinker, for that he had for the last four years dismissed all the pride with which philosophy had filled him, and felt once more the power of religious truth. He also begged for forgiveness for any offence which, in his ignorance, he might have given to good manners and morals.
When the private papers of Louis Philippe fell into the hands of the populace at the sack of the Tuileries in February, 1848, it was discovered that Heine had for many years enjoyed a pension of some 200_l._ a year on the Civil List. This discovery gave an opening to the republicans for violent attacks on him; but there does not appear to have been anything in the circumstances of the case to make this transaction discreditable to either the giver or the receiver of the pension.
Heine is described as having lived in the simplest manner, occupying three small rooms on the third floor, the _ménage_ comprising, in addition to his wife and himself, no one but an old negress as a servant, and “Cocotte,” who has been already alluded to.