' This went on
for many days--during which, from morning to night, the house was
thronged with the public. Great was the astonishment of all people at
the meagreness of Kant's appearance; and it was universally agreed that
a corpse so wasted and fleshless had never been beheld. His head rested
upon the same cushion on which once the gentlemen of the university had
presented an address to him; and I thought that I could not apply it to
a more honorable purpose than by placing it in the coffin, as the final
pillow of that immortal head.
Upon the style and mode of his funeral, Kant had expressed his wishes
in earlier years in a separate memorandum. He there desired that it
should take place early in the morning, with as little noise and
disturbance as possible, and attended only by a few of his most
intimate friends. Happening to meet with this memorandum, whilst I was
engaged at his request in arranging his papers, I very frankly gave him
my opinion, that such an injunction would lay me, as the executor of
his will, under great embarrassments; for that circumstances might very
probably arise under which it would be next to impossible to carry it
into effect. Upon this Kant tore the paper, and left the whole to my
own discretion.
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