of the sick poet.

Among Heine's letters {187} there are four addressed to Lassalle, now as
"Dear and best beloved friend," now as "Dearest brother-in-arms." "Be
assured," he says, "that I love you beyond measure. I have never before
felt so much confidence in any one." "I have found in no one," he says
again, "so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You
have good right to be audacious--we others only usurp this Divine right,
this heavenly privilege." And to Varnhagen von Ense he writes:--

My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man
of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough
erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration
that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he
combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish
me. . . . In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and
practical intelligence.

"In every line," says Brandes, "this letter shows the far-seeing student
of life, indeed, the prophet!"

Lassalle is not backward in reciprocating the enthusiasm.

"I love Heine," he declares; "he is my second self. What audacity!
what crushing eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when
it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and
destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then
all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the command of all the
range of feeling."

Lassalle's sympathy with Heine never lessened. It was Heine who lost
grasp of the intrinsically higher nature of his countryman and
co-religionist, and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, when
Lassalle interfered in the affairs of the Countess von Hatzfeldt.
Introduced to the Countess by his friend Dr. Mendelssohn, in 1846,
Lassalle felt that here in concrete form was scope for all his enthusiasm
of humanity, and he determined to devote his life to championing the
cause of the oppressed lady. {188} The Countess was the wife of a
wealthy and powerful nobleman, who ill-treated her shamefully. He
imprisoned her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine in
sickness, and carried off her children. Her own family, as powerful as
the Count, had often intervened, and the Count's repentances were many
but short-lived. In 1846 matters reached a crisis. The Count wrote to
his second son, Paul, asking him to leave his m