e in me was never very
important, and he atoned for it sufficiently by the cold silence
which I opposed to all his accusations and raillery. While he lived
I wrote not a line against him, I never thought about him, I ignored
him completely; and that enraged him beyond measure. If I now speak
of him, I do so neither out of enthusiasm nor out of uneasiness; I am
conscious of the coolest impartiality. I write here neither an
apology nor a critique, and as in painting the man I go on my own
observation, the image I present of him ought perhaps to be regarded
as a real portrait. And such a monument is due to him--to the great
wrestler who, in the arena of our political games, wrestled so
courageously, and earned, if not the laurel, certainly the crown of
oak leaves. I give an image with his true features, without
idealization--the more like him the more honorable for his memory.
He was neither a genius nor a hero; he was no Olympian god. He was a
man, a denizen of this earth; he was a good writer and a great
patriot. . . . Beautiful, delicious peace, which I feel at this
moment in the depths of my soul! Thou rewardest me sufficiently for
everything I have done and for everything I have despised. . . . I
shall defend myself neither from the reproach of indifference nor
from the suspicion of venality. I have for years, during the life of
the insinuator, held such self-justification unworthy of me; now even
decency demands silence. That would be a frightful
spectacle!--polemics between Death and Exile! Dost thou stretch out
to me a beseeching hand from the grave? Without rancor I reach mine
toward thee. . . . See how noble it is and pure! It was never soiled
by pressing the hands of the mob, any more than by the impure gold of
the people's enemy. In reality thou hast never injured me. . . . In
all thy insinuations there is not a _louis d'or's_ worth of truth."

In one of these years Heine was married, and, in deference to the
sentiments of his wife, married according to the rites of the Catholic
Church. On this fact busy rumor afterward founded the story of his
conversion to Catholicism, and could of course name the day and spot on
which he abjured Protestanism. In his "Gestandnisse" Heine publishes a
denial of this rumor; less, he says, for the sake of depriving the
Catholics of the solace they may deri