“I only know that you are both to me!” exclaimed Gentz. “I only know that during my present journey I am indebted to you for the most precious hours, for the most sublime enjoyments. I had taken along for my reading your work on the ‘Furstenbund’ (‘Alliance of Princes’). I wished to see whether this book which, on its first appearance, so powerfully affected me, would still have the same effect upon me after an interval of twenty years. The world since then has been transformed and changed, I myself not less; and I was well aware how far my views on many most important topics would differ from yours. This, indeed, I found to be the case, and yet the whole reading was for me an uninterrupted current of delight and admiration. For four weeks I read in my leisure hours nothing but this book, and I felt my mind consecrated, strengthened, and nerved again for every thing great and good.”
“If you say this,” exclaimed Muller, “I have not labored in vain, although a German author feels sometimes tempted to believe that all his labors, all his writing and thinking were useless efforts, and nothing but seed scattered upon barren and sterile soil, and unable to bear fruit. Oh, my friend, what unfortunate days of humiliation and disgrace are still in store for Germany! But let us not talk of this now, but of you. Come, let us seat ourselves side by side upon this divan. And now tell me of your successes and your glory. The report of it has reached me, and I have learned with unenvying delight with what enthusiasm the whole literary and political world of England has received you, and how the court, the ministers, and the aristocracy of Loudon have celebrated the great German writer and politician.”
“It is true I have met in Loudon with much kindness and a flattering reception,” said Gentz, smilingly. “You know a German writer must go abroad if he lays claim to recognition and reward, for, as the proverb says, ‘The prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.’ I had, therefore, to go to England in order to secure for my voice, which until then was little heeded, some authority even in Germany.”
“And now, when you have so eminently succeeded in this, you return I hope forever to Germany?”
“It almost seems so. I follow a call of the Austrian minister, Cobenzl, and have been appointed in Vienna as Aulic councillor, with a salary of four thousand florins.”
“And in which ministry will you work?”
“Not in any particular one. I have been engaged for extraordinary services exclusively, with no other obligation than, as Minister von Cobenzl expressly writes, to work by my writings for the maintenance of the government, of morals, and order.”
A smile stole over the delicate features of Muller.
“Exactly the same words which the Minister von Thugut said to me two years ago. And you have had the courage to accept the position?”
“Yes, I have accepted it, because I hope thus to render a service to the fatherland, and to be of advantage to it. I have forever east off my Prussianism, and shall henceforth become an Austrian with body and soul.”