than myself--but for a simple woman of the elements, no more learned
than a rose, and as meaningless, if you will, as the rising moon."

Just such a woman Heine found in his Mathilde, and it is to be
remembered that for years before the illness which left him, so to
speak, at her mercy, he had loved and been faithful to her. There
are letters which seem to show that Mathilde had the defects of those
qualities of buxom light-heartedness, of eternal sunshine, which had
kept a fickle Heine so faithful. Sometimes, one gathers, she as
little realized the tragedy of Heine's suffering as she understood
his writings. As such a woman must, she often left Heine very lonely;
and seemed to feel more for her cat, or her parrot "Cocotte," than
her immortal, dying husband.

"Oh, what a night we have had!" Heine exclaimed one day to his
friend Meissner. "I have not been able to close an eye. We have had
an accident in our house; the cat fell from the mantelpiece and
scratched her right ear; it even bled a little. That gave us great
sorrow. My good Mathilde remained up and applied cold poultices to
the cat all night long. For me she never remains awake."

And another time, he said, even more bitterly, to another friend: "I
felt rather anxious yesterday. My wife had finished her toilet as
early as two o'clock and had gone to take a drive. She promised to
be back at four o'clock. It struck half-past five and she had not
got back yet. The clock struck eight and my anxiety increased. Had
she, perhaps, got tired of her sick husband and eloped with a cunning
seducer? In my painful doubt I sent the sick-nurse to her chamber to
see whether 'Cocotte' the parrot was still there. Yes, 'Cocotte' was
still there. That set me at ease again, and I began to breathe more