me to relate to you the
particulars of my interview with Napoleon? Will you listen to me
quietly, so as to judge for yourself whether that visit, which has been
censured so severely, was really so great a crime, so terrible a
perfidy against Germany, as my enemies have seen fit to pretend?"

"Speak! I told you already that I come to accuse you in the name of
Germany and of posterity, and to listen to your justification."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE CALL.

Johannes von Mueller shook his head, and as he spoke his voice grew
louder and his face kindled with enthusiasm. "M. Alexander von Humboldt
had made me acquainted with the French minister of state, M. Maret, who
frequently invited me, with Humboldt and some other _savants_, to dine
with him, and seemed to like my conversation. One morning he called to
inform me that the Emperor Napoleon desired to receive me at seven
o'clock in the evening. At the hour appointed I rode to Maret, and was
introduced to Napoleon, who was seated by himself on a sofa; several
persons, unknown to me, stood in a remote corner of the room. The
emperor commenced by referring to the history of Switzerland, and told
me I ought to finish it, because the more recent period of the history
of that country was by no means devoid of interest. From Swiss history
we passed to the history and constitution of ancient Greece, to the
theory of constitutions, to the striking difference of those of the
Asiatic nations, and the causes of this difference, to be found in the
climate and in polygamy, to the widely different characters of the Arabs
(whom the emperor extolled very highly), and the Tartars, which led us
to the invasions always threatening civilization from that side, and the
necessity of raising a bulwark against them. We then spoke of the real
value of European culture, and stated that there never had been greater
freedom, security of property, humanity, and better times in general,
than since the fifteenth century; further, that there was a mysterious
concatenation in all terrestrial events, that every thing was directed
by the inscrutable dispensations of an invisible hand, and that the
emperor himself had become great by the very actions of his enemies. We
referred to the great confederation of nations, an idea that had already
been entertained by Henry IV.; to the sources and necessity of religion;
we said that man was, perhaps, not able to bear the whole dazzling
truth, and required to be