I awoke at St. Denis from a sweet morning sleep, and heard for the first time the shout of the driver, "Paris! Paris!" Here we already inhaled the atmosphere of the capital, now visible on the horizon. A rascally lackey tried to persuade me to visit the royal sepulchre at St. Denis; but I had not come to France to see dead kings.... In twenty minutes I was in Paris, entering through the triumphal arch of the Boulevard St. Denis, which was originally erected in honour of Louis XIV., but now served to grace my entry into Paris. I was surprised at meeting such multitudes of well-dressed people, tastefully arrayed like the pictures of a fashion-journal. I was also impressed by the fact that they all spoke French, which, in Germany, is the distinguishing mark of the higher classes; the whole nation are as noble as the nobility with us. The men were all so polite, and the pretty women all smiled so graciously. If some one accidentally jostled me without immediately asking pardon, I could safely wager that it was a fellow-countryman. And if a pretty woman looked a little sour, she had either eaten sauerkraut or could read Klopstock in the original. I found everything quite charming. The skies were so blue, the air so balmy, and here and there the rays of the sun of July were still glimmering. The cheeks of the beauteous Lutetea were still flushed from the burning kisses of that sun, and the bridal flowers on her bosom were not yet wilted. But at the street-corners the words, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité," had already been erased. Honeymoons fly so quickly!
I immediately visited the restaurants to which I had been recommended. The landlords assured me that they would have made me welcome even without letters of introduction, for I had an honest and distinguished appearance, which in itself was a sufficient recommendation. Never did a German landlord so address me, even if he thought it. Such a churlish fellow feels himself in duty bound to suppress all pleasant speeches, and his German bluntness demands that he shall tell only the most disagreeable things to our faces. In the manner, and even in the language, of the French, there is so much delicious flattery, which costs so little, and is yet so gratifying. My poor sensitive soul, which had shrunk with shyness from the rudeness of the fatherland, again expanded under the genial influence of French urbanity. God has given us tongues that we may say something pleasant to our fellow-men.
My French had grown rusty since the battle of Waterloo, but after half-an-hour's conversation with a pretty flower-girl in the Passage de l'Opéra it soon flowed fluently again. I managed to stammer forth gallant phrases in broken French, and explained to the little charmer the Linnæan system, in which flowers are classified according to their stamens. The little one practised a different system, and divided flowers into those which smelled pleasantly and those which smelled unpleasantly. I believe that she applied a similar classification to men. She was surprised that, notwithstanding my youth, I was so learned, and spread the fame of my erudition through the whole Passage de l'Opéra. I inhaled with rapturous delight the delicious aroma of flattery, and amused myself charmingly. I walked on flowers, and many a roasted pigeon came flying into my gaping mouth.
...Among the notabilities whom I met soon after my arrival in Paris was Victor Bohain; and I love to recall to memory the jovial, intellectual form of him who did so much to dispel the clouds from the brow of the German dreamer, and to initiate his sorrow-laden heart into the gaieties of French life. He had at that time already founded the Europe Littéraire, and, as editor, solicited me to write for his journal several articles on Germany, after the genre of Madame de Staël. I promised to furnish the articles, particularly mentioning, however, that I should write them in a style quite different from that of Madame de Staël. "That is a matter of indifference to me," was the laughing answer; "like Voltaire, I tolerate every genre, excepting only the genre ennuyeux." And in order that I, poor German, should not fall into the genre ennuyeux, friend Bohain often invited me to dine with him, and stimulated my brain with champagne. No one knew better than he how to arrange a dinner at which one should not only enjoy the best cuisine, but be most pleasantly entertained. No one could do the honours of host as well as he; and he was certainly justified in charging the stockholders of the Europe Littéraire with one hundred thousand francs as the expense of these banquets. Even his wooden leg contributed to the humour of the man, and when he hobbled around the table, serving out champagne to his guests, he resembled Vulcan performing the duties of Hebe's office amidst the uproarious mirth of the assembled gods. Where is Victor Bohain now? I have heard nothing of him for a long period. The last I saw of him was about ten years ago, at an inn at Granville. He had just come over from England, where he had been studying the colossal English national debt, in this occupation smothering the recollection of his own little personal debts, to this little town on the coast of Normandy, and here I found him seated at a table with a bottle of champagne and an open-mouthed, stupid-looking citizen, to whom he was earnestly explaining a business project by which, as Bohain eloquently demonstrated, a million could be realised. Bohain always had a great fondness for speculation, and in all his projects there was always a million in progress—never less than a million. His friends nicknamed him, on this account, Messer Millione.
...The founding of the Europe Littéraire was an excellent idea. Its success seemed assured, and I have never been able to understand why it failed. Only one evening before the day on which the suspension occurred, Victor Bohain gave a brilliant ball in the editorial salons of the journal, at which he danced with his three hundred stockholders, just like Leonidas with his three hundred Spartans the day before the battle of Thermopylæ. Every time that I behold in the gallery of the Louvre the painting by David which portrays that scene of antique heroism, I am reminded of the last ball of Victor Bohain. Just like the death-defying king in David's picture, so stood Victor Bohain on his solitary leg; it was the same classic pose. Stranger, when thou strollest in Paris through the Chaussée d'Antin towards the Boulevards, and findest thyself in the low-lying, filthy street that was once called the Rue Basse du Rempart, know that thou standest at the Thermopylæ of the Europe Littéraire, where Victor Bohain with his three hundred stockholders so heroically fell.
...In my articles on German philosophy I blabbed without reserve the secrets of the schools, which, draped in scholastic formulas, were previously known only to the initiated. My revelations excited the greatest surprise in France, and I remember that leading French thinkers naively confessed to me that they had always believed German philosophy to be a peculiar mystic fog, behind which divinity lay hidden as in a cloud, and that German philosophers were ecstatic seers, filled with piety and the fear of God. It is not my fault that German philosophy is just the reverse of that which until now we have called piety and fear of God, and that our latest philosophers have proclaimed absolute atheism to be the last word of German philosophy. Relentlessly and with bacchantic recklessness they tore aside the blue curtain from the German heavens, and cried, "Behold! all the gods have flown, and there above sits only an old spinster with leaden hands and sorrowful heart—Necessity."
Alas! what then sounded so strange is now being preached from all the house-tops in Germany, and the fanatic zeal of many of these propagandists is terrible! We have now bigoted monks of atheism, grand-inquisitors of infidelity, who would have bound Voltaire to the stake because he was at heart an obstinate deist. So long as such doctrines remained the secret possession of an intellectual aristocracy, and were discussed in a select coterie-dialect which was incomprehensible to the lackeys in attendance, while we at our philosophical petit-soupers were blaspheming, so long did I continue to be one of the thoughtless free-thinkers, of whom the majority resembled those grand-seigneurs who, shortly before the Revolution, sought by means of the new revolutionary ideas to dispel the tedium of their indolent court-life. But as soon as I saw that the rabble began to discuss the same themes at their unclean symposiums, where instead of wax-candles and chandeliers gleamed tallow-dips and oil-lamps; when I perceived that greasy cobblers and tailors presumed in their blunt mechanics' speech to deny the existence of God; when atheism began to stink of cheese, brandy, and tobacco—then my eyes were suddenly opened, and that which I had not comprehended through reason, I now learned through my olfactory organs and through my loathing and disgust. Heaven be praised! my atheism was at an end.
To be candid, it was perhaps not alone disgust that made the principles of the godless obnoxious to me, and induced me to abandon their ranks. I was oppressed by a certain worldly apprehension which I could not overcome, for I saw that atheism had entered into a more or less secret compact with the most terribly naked, quite fig-leafless, communistic communism. My dread of the latter has nothing in common with that of the parvenu, who trembles for his wealth, or with that of well-to-do tradesmen, who fear an interruption of their profitable business. No; that which disquiets me is the secret dread of the artist and scholar, who sees our whole modern civilisation, the laboriously-achieved product of so many centuries of effort, and the fruit of the noblest works of our ancestors, jeopardised by the triumph of communism. Swept along by the resistless current of generous emotions, we may perhaps sacrifice the cause of art and science, even all our own individual interests, for the general welfare of the suffering and oppressed people. But we can no longer disguise from ourselves what we have to expect when the great, rude masses, which by some are called the people, by others the rabble, and whose legitimate sovereignty was proclaimed long ago, shall obtain actual dominion. The poet, in particular, experiences a mysterious dread in contemplating the advent to power of this uncouth sovereign. We will gladly sacrifice ourselves for the people, for self-sacrifice constitutes one of our most exquisite enjoyments—the emancipation of the people has been the great task of our lives; we have toiled for it, and in its cause endured indescribable misery, at home as in exile—but the poet's refined and sensitive nature revolts at every near personal contact with the people, and still more repugnant is the mere thought of its caresses, from which may Heaven preserve us! A great democrat once remarked that if a king had taken him by the hand, he would immediately have thrust it into the fire to purify it. In the same manner I would say, if the sovereign people vouchsafed to press my hand, I would hasten to wash it. The poor people is not beautiful, but very ugly; only that ugliness simply comes from dirt, and will disappear as soon as we open public baths, in which His Majesty may gratuitously bathe himself.
...It required no great foresight to foretell these terrible events so long before their occurrence. I could easily prophesy what songs would one day be whistled and chirped in Germany, for I saw the birds hatching that in after-days gave tone to the new school of song. I saw Hegel, with his almost comically serious face, like a setting hen, brooding over the fatal eggs; and I heard his cackling; to tell the truth, I seldom understood him, and only through later reflection did I arrive at an understanding of his works. I believe he did not wish to be understood.
...One beautiful starlight night, Hegel stood with me at an open window. I, being a young man of twenty-two, and having just eaten well and drunk coffee, naturally spoke with enthusiasm of the stars, and called them abodes of the blest. But the master muttered to himself, "The stars! Hm! hm! the stars are only a brilliant eruption on the firmament." "What!" cried I; "then there is no blissful spot above, where virtue is rewarded after death?" But he, glaring at me with his dim eyes, remarked, sneering, "So you want a pourboire because you have supported your sick mother and not poisoned your brother?" At these words he looked anxiously around, but was reassured when he saw that it was only Henry Beer.