“I believe it is unnecessary for you to be afraid at all,” said Palm, smiling. “We carry our apprehensions to too great a length, you may depend upon it, and because we see M. Bonaparte putting whole states into his pocket, we believe it would be easy for him likewise to put a respectable citizen and bookseller of Nuremberg into it. But, be it spoken between us, that is rather a haughty idea, and M. Bonaparte has to attend to other things than to take notice of a bookseller and his publications. Remember, my child, that he has just got up the Confederation of the Rhine, and, moreover, is said to be preparing for a war with Prussia. How should he, therefore, have time to think of a poor bookseller?”
“Do you think, when the lion is going to meet his adversary and to struggle with him, he will leave the wasp which he has met on his way, and which has stung him in the ear, unpunished, because he has more important things to attend to?”
“But I did not sting him at all,” said Palm, smiling. “Let us calmly consider the whole affair, dearest Anna, and you will see that I have in reality noting to fear, and that only the accursed terror which this M. Bonaparte has struck into the souls of all Germans has caused us this whole alarm. A few months ago I received by mail, from a person unknown to me, a large package of books, enclosing a letter, in which the stranger requested me to send the copies of the pamphlet contained in the package immediately to all German booksellers, and to give it as wide a circulation as possible. The letter contained also a draft for one thousand florins, drawn by a banker of Vienna, Baron Franke, on a wealthy banking-house of our city. This sum of one thousand florins, said the letter, was to be a compensation for my trouble and for the zeal with which, the writer stated, he felt convinced I would attend to the circulation of the pamphlet.”
“But the very mystery connected with the whole transaction ought to have aroused your suspicion, my beloved.”
“Why! Are not we Germans now under the unfortunate necessity of keeping secret our most sublime thoughts and our most sacred sentiments? And ought not, therefore, every one of us to take pains to honor and protect this secrecy, instead of suspecting it?”
“But the very title of this pamphlet was dangerous, ‘Germany in her Deepest Degradation.’ You might have guessed whom this accusation was aimed at.”
“At Germany, I thought, at our infamy and cowardice, at the perfidy of our princes, at the torpid, passive indifference of our people. It is high time that Germany, which is now tottering about like a somnambulist, should be aroused by a manful word from her slumber, so as to take heart again and draw the sword. The title told me that the pamphlet contained such words; hence, I was not at liberty to keep it out of circulation. It would have been a robbery perpetrated upon Germany, a theft perpetrated upon him who sent me the money, and to whom I could not return it, because I was not aware of his name.”
“You ought to have thought of your wife and your children,” murmured Anna, sighing.
“I thought of you,” he said, tenderly; “hence, I did not read the pamphlet, in order not to be shaken in what I thought my duty. First, I had to fulfil my duty as a citizen and man of honor; then only I was at liberty to think of you and my personal safety. I sent, therefore, in the first place, a certain number of copies of the pamphlet to M. Stage, the bookseller, and requested him to circulate them an speedily as possible among his customers.”
“And, God knows, he has done so,” sighed Anna, “and, like you, he was not deterred by the title.”