And Musset’s verses arose in my memory: 

   “Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
   And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?”

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment.

A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism.  He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything.  And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought.

“So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?” I said to the German.

He smiled sadly.

“Up to the time of his death, monsieur.”

And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came near him.

He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking and tearing to pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a dog tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.

He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away, astonished and terrified:  “I thought I had spent an hour with the devil.”

Then he added: 

“He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even after his death.  I can tell you an anecdote about it that is not generally known, if it would interest you.”

And he began, in a languid voice, interrupted by frequent fits of coughing.

“Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in turn, two by two, till morning.

“He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy.  Two wax candles were burning on the stand by the bedside.

“It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our comrades.  The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.

“The face was not changed.  It was laughing.  That pucker which we knew so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak.  His thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us.  We felt ourselves more than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him.  His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead.  A feeling of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.