he returned from America with the Declaration of Human Rights, the
decalogue of the world's new creed, which was revealed to him amid
the thunders and lightnings of cannon. . . . And the tricolored flag
waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets resound with the
Marseillaise! . . . It is all over with my yearning for repose. I
now know again what I will do, what I ought to do, what I must do.
. . . I am the son of the Revolution, and seize again the hallowed
weapons on which my mother pronounced her magic benediction. . . .
Flowers! flowers! I will crown my head for the death-fight. And the
lyre too, reach me the lyre, that I may sing a battle-song. . . .
Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from the heavens, and burn
up the palaces, and illuminate the huts. . . . Words like bright
javelins, that whirr up to the seventh heaven and strike the pious
hypocrites who have skulked into the Holy of Holies. . . . I am all
joy and song, all sword and flame! Perhaps, too, all delirium. . . .
One of those sunbeams wrapped in brown paper has flown to my brain,
and set my thoughts aglow. In vain I dip my head into the sea. No
water extinguishes this Greek fire: . . . Even the poor Heligolanders
shout for joy, although they have only a sort of dim instinct of what
has occurred. The fisherman who yesterday took me over to the little
sand island, which is the bathing-place here, said to me smilingly,
'The poor people have won!' Yes; instinctively the people comprehend
such events, perhaps, better than we, with all our means of
knowledge. Thus Frau von Varnhagen once told me that when the issue
of the Battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the maid-servant suddenly
rushed into the room with the sorrowful cry, 'The nobles have won!'
. . . This morning another packet of newspapers is come, I devour them
like manna. Child that I am, affecting details touch me yet more
than the momentous whole. Oh, if I could but see the dog Medor.
. . . The dog Medor brought his master his gun and cartridge-box, and
when his master fell, and was buried with his fellow-heroes in the
Court of the Louvre, there stayed the poor dog like a monument of
faithfulness, sitting motionless on the grave, day and night, eating
but little of the food that was offered him--burying the greater part
of it in the earth, p