Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

'Once,' he also wrote in his introduction to Shakspeare's Maids and Women,' once I would endeavour to break through the halberds wherewith the garden of enjoyment was barred up from the world: but my hand was weak, the halberdiers laughed and thrust their long blades into my breast, and the stirring, generous heart became quiet from shame and not from fear.'

Heine had, however, taken up with such passionate and vehement emphasis the part of tribune of the people on his arrival in France, that his silence on political matters did him no good with the governing powers, while it laid him open to the imputation, from the German liberals, of being a renegade to the liberal cause. It must be remarked again, Heine was no politician: he was a poet: his attitude in politics was critical: he never declared himself in favour of the republican form of government, and was not individually disinclined to an enlightened autocracy. The consequence was that he was maligned by the republicans for being a monarchist, and persecuted by the monarchical party for being a revolutionist. We have already shown how the predominance in him of æsthetic over political interest had excited the anger and the scorn of Börne. All the correspondents in Paris for German papers, for the most part refugees, were for ever on the look-out for some bit of tittle-tattle to gratify at once their own little envious malignities, and to find food for the suspicious fancies of the German liberals. Vexations of this kind became so intolerable at last that Heine changed his residence time after time to throw his tormentors off the scent, sought afresh for habitations in the most retired quarters, and gave orders that no German should ever be admitted to him. Not a few of this noxious swarm of German scribblers were inveterate and impudent beggars, as may be seen from the following letter:

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

For the last two years,' he wrote to Laube, in 1835, 'nothing very cheerful has reached me from the Vaterland,

and the Germans whom I have had to see in Paris have cured me of all yearning for home. A pack of rascals are they, mendicants who take to menaces if you refuse to give them anything; scoundrels who are always speaking of honour and Vaterland; liars and thieves-that I need not tell you: in your letter I saw how you commiserate with me on account of these cleanly individuals who are for ever claiming kindredship with me. I could never give poignées de main to the dirty fellows, and now I deny them the sight of my countenance.' And yet, in spite of the vexations which greedy calumniating countrymen thus brought upon him, there are many acts of pure spontaneous generosity recorded of Heine during this trying period, when his own purse was too often in a very critical state and he was himself at times dreadfully pressed to find money. Poor as he was, he lent to his necessitous countrymen hundreds upon hundreds of francs without hope of ever seeing them again, and with few exceptions he met with little but ingratitude in return.

203

CHAPTER VIII.

PARIS SOCIETY.

HEINE, however, found compensation for the vexation and unpleasantness which this German Lumpengesindel and refugee element brought upon him in the visits of old friends to the French capital, and in intercourse with all that was distinguished in the cultivated and elegant world of Paris.

As for his friends in Germany, death had been busy amongst them almost every year, beginning with the time he settled in Paris. Ludwig Robert and his beautiful wife died of that visitation of cholera which went the round of Europe, during a visit to Baden-Baden in July 1832. The noblesouled Rahel von Varnhagen, with whose intelligence and character Heine perhaps felt the most intimate sympathy that was given him to feel with anyone on this earth, died March 7th, 1833. Heine wrote, on the news of her death, to Varnhagen, 'alas! I feel the truth of the signification of these Roman words, "Life is a combat." Thus I stand in the breach and see how my friends fall around us. One friend has always fought valiantly, and well deserves her laurel. I cannot this moment write for tears. Alas, we poor men!

What a battle-field

we must fight with tears in our eyes. is this earth!' About the same time died his mother's brother, Simon von Geldern, in Düsseldorf. In August

1838 his old friend Moses Moser died; in May 1839, Edward Gans; in January 1840, Rosa Maria Assing, a sister of Varnhagen, who had passed through Paris in 1835; and in August of 1840, also, his true brother in arms,' his treuer

Waffenbruder, as he styled him, Carl Immermann. On the death of Rosa Maria Assing, a lady of fine gifts and the mother of Ludmilla Assing, she who was condemned to imprisonment by Prussian justice for publishing the diary of her uncle, Heine wrote to Varnhagen, 'I knew the departed quite well: she ever exhibited towards me the most amiable sympathy: she was so like you in circumspection and gentleness, and although I did not see her very often, yet I number her among the confidants and the intimate circle where people understand each other without speaking. Blessed God! how has this circle, this quiet community, gradually dissolved in the last ten years! We weep fruitless tears after them, until we too shall depart: the tears which will then flow for us will not be so warm, since the new generation neither know what we would nor what we have suffered. And how could they know us? Our special secrets we have never spoken out and we never shall speak them out, and we descend into the grave with closed lips. We understood each other with mere looks: we looked at each other, and knew what we felt : this language of the eyes will be for the later-born only an undecipherable riddle.'

Nevertheless, many were the visitors to Paris during these years, in whose intercourse Heine found delight and entertainment. O. L. B. Wolff, his ever genial friend and critic; Helmina von Chezy, the poetess whom he had known at Berlin; his friend August Lewald; Count Auersperg, the genial Austrian poet, known under the name of Anastasius Grün; Prince Pückler-Muskau, whose sparkling 'Letters of a Deceased Individual,' Briefe einer Verstorbene,' consisting for the most part of minute descriptions of English society, Heine was ever ready to praise.

We have already seen that Heine and Heinrich Laube had been in friendly correspondence. Laube, too, visited Paris with his wife in 1839, and his presence was all the more agreeable to Heine as he was in a condition to give him

[ocr errors]

information about the literary and political state of Germany, of which he stood sadly in need. For such intelligence he had been accustomed to rely on the few German papers which he could pick up in the Parisian cabinets de lecture, journals limited for the most part to the Allgemeine Zeitung' and the 'Morgenblatt,' or in a German establishment of the same character established in 1837. In respect of which cabinets de lecture a story characteristic of Heine may be told. He was reading in one of them near an old French gentleman who kept up a long course of hems' and clearings of the throat, and on the occasion of each outbreak Heine cried hisch! hisch!' At last the individual got up and complained to Heinc of his exclamations. I beg your pardon,' he replied, but I thought it was a dog.' Upon which the complainer retired quite satisfied.

Laube was introduced by Heine to all the numerous French authors of his acquaintance, and he on his side made Heine acquainted with Richard Wagner, who did not then appear so clearly in the light of the author of the music of the future as he does at present. Richard Wagner, with that boundless confidence in his genius which is now of European notoriety, being then a musical composer quite unknown, had shipped himself at Riga in a sailing vessel bound for London, with his wife, and a half-finished opera in his portmanteau, together with a monster Newfoundland dog of immense appetite, and with a very light purse, and from London he had transplanted himself to Paris, under the idea that his genius would rapidly arrive at fame and prosperity in the great capital of taste and elegance. Heine folded his hands, he says, reverently before this example of the confidence of a German artist. Poor Wagner seems not to have an idea that every musical artist in Europe rushed to Paris on the same errand, namely, to get the stamp of celebrity placed upon them by a Parisian public, nor did he quite proceed in the right way to secure success. He saw Rossini, and was

« ПредишнаНапред »