reover, to find that the exceptions were rather among the half-men,
the would-be extremely good, but whose goodness was of that dead and
passive kind which spoke to but a small elevation of thought or
activity; while just in proportion as a man was strong, and real, and
energetic, was his ability to see good in Reineke. It was really most
strange: one near friend of ours--a man who, as far as we knew (and we
knew him well), had never done a wrong thing--when we ventured to hint
something about roguery, replied, 'You see, he was such a clever rogue,
that he had a right.' Another, whom we pressed more closely with that
treacherous cannibal feast at Malepartus, on the body of poor Lampe,
said off-hand and with much impatience of such questioning, 'Such
fellows were made to be eaten.' What could we do? It had come to
this;--as in the exuberance of our pleasure with some dear child, no
ordinary epithet will sometimes reach to express the vehemence of our
affection, and borrowing language out of the opposites, we call him
little rogue or little villain, so here, reversing the terms of the
analogy, we bestow the fulness of our regard on Reineke because of that
transcendently successful roguery.

When we asked our friends how they came to feel as they did, they had
little to say. They were not persons who could be suspected of any
latent disposition towards evil-doing; and yet though it appeared as if
they were falling under the description of those unhappy ones who, if
they did not such things themselves, yet 'had pleasure in those who did
them,' they did not care to justify themselves. The fact was so: [Greek:
arche to hoti]: it was a fact--what could we want more? Some few
attempted feebly to maintain that the book was a satire. But this only
moved the difficulty a single step; for the fact of the sympathy
remained unimpaired, and if it was a satire we were ourselves the
objects of it. Others urged what we said above, that the story was only
of poor animals that, according to Descartes, not only had no souls, but
scarcely had even life in any original and sufficient sense, and
therefore we need not trouble ourselves. But one of two alternatives it
seemed we were bound to choose, either of which was fatal to the
proposed escape. Either there was a man hiding under the fox's skin; or
else, if real foxes have such brains as Reineke was furnished withal, no
honest doubt could be entertained that some sort of conscience was not
f