My life is on the decline; the time which I still have I must employ.

It belongs not to me, but to the State." [Preuss, iv.

257 n.] About 11, business, followed by short surgical details or dressings (sadly insisted on in those Books, and in themselves sufficiently sad), being all done,--his friends or daily company are admitted: five chiefly, or (NOT counting Minister Hertzberg) four, Lucchesini, Schwerin, Pinto, Gortz; who sit with him about one hour now, and two hours in the evening again:--dreary company to our minds, perhaps not quite so dreary to the King's; but they are all he has left.

And he talks cheerfully with them "on Literature, History, on the topics of the day, or whatever topic rises, as if there were no sickness here." A man adjusted to his hard circumstances; and bearing himself manlike and kinglike among them.
He well knew himself to be dying; but some think, expected that the end might be a little farther off.

There is a grand simplicity of stoicism in him; coming as if by nature, or by long SECOND-nature; finely unconscious of itself, and finding nothing of peculiar in this new trial laid on it.