A despot is the practical reason of a whole country; the subjects are just so many impulses contending therewith, which must be overcome. The legislative power, therefore, belongs to him alone (the executive to his favorites);—even mere talented men (like Solon and Lycurgus) held the law-giving power in themselves alone, and were the magnetic needle which guided the ship of state; a despot consists, as their throne-successor, of almost nothing but laws, his own and others at once, and is the magnetic mountain, which draws the ship of state to itself. "To be one's own slave is the hardest slavery," said an old man, at least an ancient and a Latin; but the despot demands of others only the easier kind, and takes upon himself the harder. Another says Parere scire, par imperio gloria est;[[127]] a negro slave, therefore, wins glory and honor as much as a negro king. Servi pro nullis habentur;[[128]] hence it is that political nullities feel so little the pressure of the court atmosphere; whereas despotic realities earn their freedom by the very fact that they know so well how to feel and prize its worth. A republican in the nobler sense, e. g. the Emperor of Persia, whose liberty-cap is a turban and his liberty-tree a throne, fights for freedom behind his military Propaganda and behind his Sans-culottes with an ardor such as the ancient authors demand and depict in the Gymnasia. Nay, we are never justified in denying such enthroned republicans a Brutus's greatness of soul, before we have put them to the proof; and if in history good were delineated more than evil, one would have even now the means of showing, among so many Shahs, Khans, Rajahs, and Califs, many a Harmodius, Aristogeiton, Brutus, &c. who was able to pay for his freedom (slaves contend for another's) even with the death of otherwise good men and friends.
End of the graciously allowed Extra-leaf upon the greater Freedom enjoyed in Despotisms.
The extra-leaf and the Third Act are ended, but the latter was shorter and more serious than the former has been.
Fourth Act.—By the act of dropping the curtain and raising it again, I have carried the world over from the shortest Act into the longest. To the Princess who now, as the German Imperial History announces, is sitting—came her compatriots in a body, who neither looked very honest nor very stupid, the chief-governess, the Court-confessor, the Court-Æsculapius, ladies and servants and all. This court-train does not say its farewell,—that has already been said privately,—but merely recapitulates it by a silent bow. The next step of the united Italians was from the middle chamber to—Italy.
The Italians passed along before Sebastian's warehouse, and wiped off from their faces, whose hard parts were en haut-relief,—the German were en bas-relief, a nobler glimmer than that which courts communicate: Victor saw among so many accentuated eye-sockets the multiplied signs of the melancholy with which he himself was oppressed as he thought of the willing stranger-heart which remained behind alone under the frosty canopy of the German throne and clouds, torn away from her loved ways and scenes, brought before microscopic eyes, whose focal point scorches into tender feelings, and bound to a breast of ice....
When he thought of all this, and saw the compatriots, how they pocketed their feelings and packed themselves off, because they were not permitted to exchange another word with the Princess; and when he looked upon the mute, submissive form within there, who was not allowed to show any other pearls than Oriental ones, (although the dream and the possession of the latter signifies Western ones, or of the evening land,—tears, I mean,) then did he wish, "Ah, that I could only, thou good creature, draw a treble veil over thy eye long enough for it to shed a tear!—might I only kiss that hand, so rudely set up at auction, as thy court-ladies are now doing, so as to inscribe with my tears upon the sold hand the nearness of a sympathizing heart." ...
Be tender and expand not your hatred of princes into hatred of princesses! Shall a bowed-down female head not touch our hearts with pity, because it leans on a mahogany table? and shall great tears not move us, because they fall upon silk? "It is too hard," Victor said, when in Hanover, "that poets and magistri legentes, when they pass by a chateau, make, with an envious, malicious pleasure, the remark, In there as much bread of sorrow is baked, perhaps, as in fishermen's huts. O yes, doubtless greater and harder loaves! But is the eye, out of which in the badger's kennel of a Scotchman nothing extorts a tear but the smoke of the room, worthy of a greater compassion than the tender one which, like that of an Albino, smarts at the very rays of joy, and which the spirit fills with spiritual tears? Ah, down in the valleys only the skin is punctured, but up on the high places of rank, the heart; and the index-hand of the village clock moves merely around the hours of hunger and sweat, but the second-hand, set with brilliants, flies round dreary, despairing, bloody minutes."
But fortunately never is rehearsed to us the passion-history of those womanly victims, whose hearts are tossed to the mint, and, like other jewels, cast among the throne-insignia,—who, as flowers with souls, hung upon an ermine-clad dead man's heart, fall to pieces, unenjoyed, on the bed of state, mourned by no one, save by a distant, tender soul, which finds no place in the Court-almanac....
This Act consists of nothing but goings: in fact, this whole comedy resembles the life of a child. In the first Act, there was providing of household furniture for the coming existence; in the second, the arrival; in the third, talking; in the fourth, learning to walk, &c.
When Germany had delivered discourses enough to Italy, and Italy to Germany, then Germany, or rather Flachsenfingen, or properly a piece of it, the Minister Schleunes, took the Princess by the hand and led her out of the torrid zone into the frigid; I mean, not from the bridal bed to the wedded bed, but—from the Italian territory of the apartment into the Flachsenfingenite, away over the silken Rubicon. The Flachsenfingen court stands over yonder as right wing, and has not yet gone into the fight. So soon as she had passed the silken line, then it was well that the first thing she did in her new land should be something memorable; and in fact she did, before the eyes of her new court, take 4½ paces and—sit down in the Flachsenfingen chair, which I set out vacant for that purpose in the very first Act. Now, at last, the right wing marched into fire, for the kissing of hands and sleeves. Each one in the right wing—the left not at all—felt the dignity of what he entered upon, and this feeling which melted into one with personal pride came—as according to Plattner pride is akin to the sublime—quite apropos to my Benefit-farce, in which I cannot succeed in being sublime enough. Great and silent, embarked in silken bow-nets, buried in a gulf of robes, the court-dames sail up with their lips to the still hand which is fastened with conjugal manacles to a stranger's. Less stately, but still stately, is urged on, also, the Adamitish portion of the Dramatis Personæ, among whom, unfortunately, I see the apothecary Zeusel.