he Great, a poor teacher
at Leipzig was lying on his deathbed; the long vexations and
persecutions he had endured from his predecessor, a vehement pastor,
had brought him there. His spiritual opponent sought reconciliation
with the dying man; he promised the teacher, Haupt, to take care of his
uneducated children, and he kept his word. He placed one son in the
great commercial house, Frege, which was then at the height of
prosperity. The young Haupt won the confidence of his principal; and
when he wished to establish himself at Zittau, the house of Frege made
the needy youth a loan of 10,000 thalers. The year after, the new
merchant wrote to his creditor to say that his business was making
rapid progress, but that he should get into great difficulties if he
had not the same sum again. His former principal sent him the double.
After eight years the Zittau merchant repaid the whole loan, and the
day on which he sent the last sum, he drank in his house the first
bottle of wine. The son of this man, Ernst Friederich Haupt (he who
will give an account of his school hours in his father's house),
studied law and became a Syndicus, and afterwards Burgomaster of his
native town; he was a man of powerful character and depth of mind, and
also a literary man of comprehensive knowledge; some Latin poems
printed by him are among the most refined and elegant specimens of this
kind of poetry. His life was earnest, and he laboured in a very
restricted sphere with a zeal which never seemed sufficient to satisfy
himself. But the weight of his energetic character became, at the
beginning of the political commotions in 1830, burdensome to the young
democrats among the citizens. It was in the city where he dwelt that
the agitation was carried on by an unworthy man, who later, by his evil
deeds, brought himself to a lamentable end. In the bewilderment of
the first movement, the citizens destroyed the faithful attachment
which for thirty years had subsisted between them and their superior.
The proud and strict man was wounded to his innermost soul by
heartlessness and ingratitude; he withdrew from all public occupation,
and neither the entreaties nor the genuine repentance evinced by his
fellow-citizens shortly after, could make him forget the bitter
mortification of those years which had left their mark upon his life.
When he walked through the streets, looking quietly before him, a
noble melancholy old man with white hair, then--it is related