friend Lewald once more, on the 13th of October, 1841, he says: "You
will have learned that, a few days before the duel, to make
Mathilde's position secure, I felt it right to turn my free marriage
into a lawful one. This conjugal duel, which will never cease till
the death of one or the other of us, is far more perilous than any
brief meeting with a Solomon Straus of Jew Lane, Frankfort."

His friend Campe had been previously advised of "my marriage with the
lovely and honest creature who has lived by my side for years as
Mathilde Heine; was always respected and looked upon as my wife, and
was defiled by foul names only by some scandal-loving Germans of the
Frankfort clique."

Heine's duel resulted in nothing more serious than a flesh-wound on
the hip. But alas! the wild months of dissipation before he had met
Mathilde were before long to be paid for by that long, excruciating
suffering which is one of the most heroic spectacles in the history
of literature. It is the paradox of the mocker that he often
displays the virtues and sentiments which he mocks, much more
manfully than the professional sentimentalist. Courage and laughter
are old friends, and Heine's laughter--his later laughter, at
least--was perhaps mostly courage. If for no other reason, one would
hope for a hereafter--so that Charles II and Heine may have met and
compared notes upon dying. Heine was indeed an "unconscionable long
time a-dying," but then he died with such brilliant patience, with
such good humour, and, in the meanwhile, contrived to write such
haunting poetry, such saturnine criticism.

And, all the time, during those ten years of dying, his faithful
"Treasure" was by his side. The people who "understood" him better,