erhaps as nourishment for his buried master!"

The enthusiasm which was kept thus at boiling heat by imagination, cooled
down rapidly when brought into contact with reality. In the same book be
indicates, in his caustic way, the commencement of that change in his
political _temperature_--for it cannot be called a change in
opinion--which has drawn down on him immense vituperation from some of
the patriotic party, but which seems to have resulted simply from the
essential antagonism between keen wit and fanaticism.

"On the very first days of my arrival in Paris I observed that things
wore, in reality, quite different colors from those which had been
shed on them, when in perspective, by the light of my enthusiasm.
The silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on the
shoulders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamorphosed
into a brown perruque, which made a pitiable covering for a narrow
skull. And even the dog Medor, which I visited in the Court of the
Louvre, and which, encamped under tricolored flags and trophies, very
quietly allowed himself to be fed--he was not at all the right dog,
but quite an ordinary brute, who assumed to himself merits not his
own, as often happens with the French; and, like many others, he made
a profit out of the glory of the Revolution. . . . He was pampered
and patronized, perhaps promoted to the highest posts, while the true
Medor, some days after the battle, modestly slunk out of sight, like
the true people who created the Revolution."

That it was not merely interest in French politics which sent Heine to
Paris in 1831, but also a perception that German air was not friendly to
sympathizers in July revolutions, is humorously intimated in the
"Gestandnisse."

"I had done much and suffered much, and when the sun of the July
Revolution arose in France, I had become very weary, and needed some
recreation. Also, my native air was every day more unhealthy for me,
and it was time I should seriously think of a change of climate. I
had visions: the clouds terrified me, and made all sorts of ugly
faces at me. It often seemed to me as if the sun were a Prussian
cockade; at night I dreamed of a hideous black eagle, which gnawed my
liver; and I was very melancholy. Add to this, I had become
acquainted with an old Berlin Justizrath, who had spent many years in
the fortress