IV.
He was supremely happy—Wie ein Fisch im Wasser—in spite of his slight deformity. He was industrious, had finished another volume of poems and was making mental notes for a dramatic poem.
He was not fond of the German refugees in Paris. Now and then there came a refugee of real worth—but most of them were without talent, without any well defined idea of what they wanted, and only plumed themselves with the title of revolutionaries. Paris in those days was a hotbed of revolutionists; Mazzini with his carbonari, plotters from Portugal, insurgents from Poland, assassins from Spain. Prussian spies were abundant and very active, and the French government was secretly lending a helping hand to rid Paris of these stirring elements. Louis Phillipe had enough to contend with without foreign intriguers.
Albert was living quietly in a district inhabited by the genteel poor—clerks, journalists, small shop-keepers, artists—and kept aloof from his compatriots. But the news he was receiving from “home”—for he never ceased thinking of Germany as his home—was disquieting. The news came to him from various sources, but chiefly from pilgrims who were coming to worship at his shrine. Every aspiring poet, every young writer with an idea in his head, every agitator, came either to pay homage to his genius or to see the poet in exile in order to give first-hand information to their friends at home. Albert had the misfortune of having had woven around him myths and legends that reflected upon his morality. To the Germans he was a Don Juan. His flippant speech (often only the flash of the moment), his witty epigrams (at times uttered for the sheer love of wit), his blasphemy (rarely intended), gave credence to all the shocking things his enemies told about him. Furthermore, his imaginary love affairs narrated, and hinted at, in his poems were taken too literally. His countrymen failed to realize that one actually given to licentiousness rarely writes about it, never glorifies it in song and rhapsodies; that one who yields to dissipation rarely indulges in sweet day dreams about it. The Germans have always been too stolid, too ponderous, too matter of fact to comprehend the subtlety of fine humor. While an elephant can easily lift a log with his trunk he is quite helpless with a feather.