I must have wished to see Krebs, to hear him speak; to observe, perhaps, the effect on the audience.  In spite of my inability to take in what he was saying, I was able to regard him objectively,—­objectively, in a restricted sense.  I noticed that he had grown even thinner; the flesh had fallen away from under his cheek-bones, and there were sharp, deep, almost perpendicular lines on either side of his mouth.  He was emaciated, that was the word.  Once in a while he thrust his hand through his dry, ashy hair which was of a tone with the paleness of his face.  Such was his only gesture.

He spoke quietly, leaning with one elbow against the side of his reading stand.  The occasional pulsations of applause were almost immediately hushed, as though the people feared to lose even a word that should fall from his dry lips.  What was it he was talking about?  I tried to concentrate my attention, with only partial success.  He was explaining the new theory of city government that did not attempt to evade, but dealt frankly with the human needs of to-day, and sought to meet those needs in a positive way...  What had happened to me, though I did not realize it, was that I had gradually come under the influence of a tragic spell not attributable to the words I heard, existing independently of them, pervading the spacious hall, weaving into unity dissentient minds.  And then, with what seemed a retarded rather than sudden awareness, I knew that he had stopped speaking.  Once more he ran his hand through his hair, he was seemingly groping for words that would not come.  I was pierced by a strange agony—­the amazing source of which, seemed to be a smile on the face of Hermann Krebs, an ineffable smile illuminating the place like a flash of light, in which suffering and tragedy, comradeship and loving kindness—­all were mingled.  He stood for a moment with that smile on his face—­swayed, and would have fallen had it not been for the quickness of a man on the platform behind him, and into whose arms he sank.

In an instant people had risen in their seats, men were hurrying down the aisles, while a peculiar human murmur or wail persisted like an undertone beneath the confusion of noises, striking the very note of my own feelings.  Above the heads of those about me I saw Krebs being carried off the platform....  The chairman motioned for silence and inquired if there were a physician in the audience, and then all began to talk at once.  The man who stood beside me clutched my arm.

“I hope he isn’t dead!  Say, did you see that smile?  My God, I’ll never forget it!”

The exclamation poignantly voiced the esteem in which Krebs was held.  As I was thrust along out of the hall by the ebb of the crowd still other expressions of this esteem came to me in fragments, expressions of sorrow and dismay, of a loyalty I had not imagined.  Mingled with these were occasional remarks of skeptics shaken, in human fashion, by the suggestion of the inevitable end that never fails to sober and terrify humanity.