Oh, that the battle were only with those hereditary foes of truth who so treacherously poison the good name of their enemies, and who even humiliated that first Preacher of the Mount, the purest hero of freedom; for as they could no longer deny that he was the greatest of men, they made of him the least of gods. He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders. But as those flags which are most rent by shot, or blackened by powder-smoke, are more highly honoured than the whitest and soundest recruiting banners, and as they are at last laid up as national relics in cathedrals, so at some future day the names of our heroes, the more they are torn and blackened, will be all the more enthusiastically honoured in the holy St. Geneviève of Freedom.
The Revolution itself has been slandered, like its heroes, and represented as a terror to princes, and as a popular scare-crow, in libels of every description. All the so-called "horrors of the Revolution" have been learned by heart by children in the schools, and at one time nothing was seen in the public fairs but harshly-coloured pictures of the guillotine. It cannot be denied that this machine, which was invented by a French physician, a great world orthopædist, Monsieur Guillotin, and with which stupid heads are easily separated from evil hearts, this wholesome machine has indeed been applied rather frequently, but still only in incurable diseases, in such cases, for example, as treachery, falsehood, and weakness, and the patients were not long tortured, not racked and broken on the wheel as thousands upon thousands of roturiers and vilains, citizens and peasants were tortured, racked, and broken on the wheel in the good old time. It is, of course, terrible that the French, with this machine, once even amputated the head of their State, and no one knows whether they ought to be accused, on that account, of parricide or of suicide; but on more thorough reflection, we find that Louis of France was less a sacrifice to passion than to circumstances, and that those men who forced the people on to such a sacrifice, and who have themselves, in every age, poured forth princely blood far more abundantly, should not appear solely as accusers. Only two kings, both of them rather kings of the nobility than of the people, were sacrificed by the people, and that not in a time of peace, or to subserve petty interests, but in the extremest needs of war, when they saw themselves betrayed, and when they least spared their own blood. But certainly more than a thousand princes were treacherously slain, on account of avarice or frivolous interests, by the dagger, by the sword, and by the poison of nobility and priests. It really seems as though these castes regarded regicide as one of their privileges, and therefore bewail the more selfishly the death of Louis the XVI. and of Charles I. Oh! that kings at last would perceive that they could live more safely as kings of the people, and protected by the law, than under the guard of their noble body-murderers.
But not only have the heroes of our revolution and the revolution itself been slandered, but even our entire age has been parodied with unheard-of wickedness; and if one hears or reads our vile traducers and scorners, then he will learn that the people are the canaille—the vile mob—that freedom is insolence, and with heaven-bent eyes and pious sighs, our enemies complain and bewail that we were frivolous and had, alas! no religion. Hypocritical, sneaking souls, who creep about bent down beneath the burden of their secret vices, dare to vilify an age which is, perhaps, holier than any of its predecessors or successors, an age that sacrifices itself for the sins of the past and for the happiness of the future, a Messiah among centuries, which could hardly endure its bloody crown of thorns and heavy cross, did it not now and then trill a merry vaudeville, and crack a joke at the modern Pharisees and Sadducees. Its colossal pains would be intolerable without such jesting and persiflage! Seriousness shows itself more majestically when laughter leads the way. And the age in this shows itself exactly like its children among the French, who have written very terribly wanton books, and yet have been very strong and serious when strength and seriousness were necessary, as, for instance, Laclos, and even Louvet de Couvray, who both fought for freedom with the self-sacrifice and boldness of martyrs, and yet who wrote in a very frivolous and indecent way, and, alas! had no religion!
As if freedom were not as good a religion as any other! And since it is ours, we may, meeting with the same measure, declare its contemners to be themselves frivolous and irreligious.
Yes, I repeat the words with which I began these pages: freedom is a new religion, the religion of our age. If Christ is not the God of this religion, he is still one of its high-priests, and his name shines consolingly in the hearts of its children. But the French are the chosen people of the new religion, the first gospels and dogmas were penned in their language. Paris is the New Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the Jordan which separates the land of Freedom from the land of the Philistines.
JAN STEEN.
[This fragment—newly translated—is taken from the Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelwopski, which was written in 1831, and published in 1834, in the first volume of the Salon. The Memoirs of Schnabelwopski consist simply of the hero's light sketches of Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Leyden, and his experiences in those towns; they have generally excited the anger of Heine's German critics and biographers, who appear to detect a tone of irreverent levity about them, which they attribute to Parisian influences. Wagner obtained the story of his Flying Dutchman from a chapter of Schnabelwopski's Memoirs.]
IN the house I lodged at in Leyden there once lived Jan Steen, the great Jan Steen, whom I hold to be as great as Raphael. Even as a sacred painter Jan was as great, and that will be clearly seen when the religion of sorrow has passed away, and the religion of joy has torn off the thick veil that covers the rose-bushes of the earth, and the nightingales dare at last to sing joyously out their long-concealed raptures.
But no nightingale will ever sing so joyously as Jan Steen painted. No one has understood so profoundly as he that there shall be an eternal festival on the earth; he comprehended that our life is only the pictured kiss of God, and he felt that the Holy Ghost is revealed most gloriously in light and in laughter.
His eye laughed into the light, and the light mirrored itself in his laughing eye. And Jan remained always a dear, good child. The stern old Pastor of Leyden sat near him by the hearth, and delivered a lengthy discourse concerning his jovial life, his laughing, unchristian conduct, his love of drinking, his disorderly domestic affairs, his obdurate gaiety; and Jan listened quietly for two long hours, and betrayed not the slightest impatience at the lengthy sermon; only once he broke in with the words—"Yes, Domine, that light is far better; yes, Domine, I beg of you to draw your stool a little nearer to the fire, so that the flame may cast its red gleam over your whole face, and leave the rest of the figure in shade——"