tself. At Berlin, I once sat in the
lecture-room of the Privy Councilor Schmaltz, a man who had saved the
state by his book on the _Red and Black Coat Danger_. You remember,
perhaps, Madame, that in Pausanias we are told that by the braying of an
ass an equally dangerous plot was once discovered, and you also know
from Livy, or from Becker's _History of the World_, that geese once
saved the Capitol, and you must certainly know from Sallust that by the
chattering of a loquacious _putaine_, the Lady Fulvia, the terrible
conspiracy of Catiline came to light. But to return to the mutton
aforesaid. I was listening to the law and rights of nations, in the
lecture-room of the Herr Privy Councilor Schmaltz, and it was a lazy
sleepy summer afternoon, and I sat on the bench, and little by little I
listened less and less--my head had gone to sleep--when all at once I
was awakened by the noise of my own feet, which had _not_ gone to sleep
and had probably heard that just the contrary of the law and rights of
nations was being taught and constitutional principles were being
reviled, and which with the little eyes of their corns had seen better
how things go in the world than the Privy Councilor with his great Juno
eyes--these poor dumb feet, incapable of expressing their immeasurable
meaning by words, strove to make themselves intelligible by drumming,
and they drummed so loudly that I thereby came near getting into a
terrible scrape.

Cursed, unreflecting feet! They once played me a little trick, when I,
on a time in Goettingen, was temporarily attending the lectures of
Professor Saalfeld, and as this learned gentleman, with his angular
agility, jumped about here and there in his desk, and wound himself up
to curse the Emperor Napoleon in regular set style--no, my poor feet, I
cannot blame you for drumming _then_--indeed, I would not have blamed
you if in your dumb _naivete_ you had expressed yourselves by still more
energetic movements. How dare I, the scholar of Le Grand, hear the
Emperor cursed? The Emperor! the Emperor! the great Emperor!

When I think of the great Emperor, all in my memory again becomes
summer-green and golden. A long avenue of lindens in bloom arises before
me, and on the leafy twigs sit nightingales, singing; the waterfall
murmurs, in full round beds flowers are growing, and dreamily nodding
their fair heads. I was on a footing of wondrous intimacy with them; the
rouged tulips, proud as beggars, condescendi