piritual Egeria was Rahel von Varnhagen.
I had three beautiful days with him in Frankfort when he was full of
Jewish wit, and hadn't yet shrunk to a mere politician. He was a brave
soldier of humanity, but he had no sense of art, and I could not stand
the dirty mob around him with its atmosphere of filthy German tobacco
and vulgar tirades against tyrants. The last time I saw him he was
almost deaf, and worn to a skeleton by consumption. He dwelt in a
vast, bright silk dressing-gown, and said that if an Emperor shook his
hand he would cut it off. I said if a workman shook mine I should wash
it. And so we parted, and he fell to denouncing me as a traitor and a
_persifleur_, who would preach monarchy or republicanism, according to
which sounded better in the sentence. Poor Lob Baruch! Perhaps he was
wiser than I in his idea that his brother Jews should sink themselves
in the nations. He was born, by the way, in the very year of old
Mendelssohn's death. What an irony! But I am sorry for those
insinuations against Mme. Strauss. I have withdrawn them from the new
edition, although, as you perhaps know, I had already satisfied her
husband's sense of justice by allowing him to shoot at me, whilst I
fired in the air. What can I more?"

"I am glad you have withdrawn them," she said, moved.

"Yes; I have no Napoleonic grip, you see. A morsel of conventional
conscience clings to me."

"Therefore I could never understand your worship of Napoleon."

"There speaks the Englishwoman. You Pharisees--forgive me--do not
understand great men, you and your Wellington! Napoleon was not of the
wood of which kings are made, but of the marble of the gods. Let me
tell you the "code Napoleon" carried light not only into the Ghettos,
but into many another noisome spider-clot of feudalism. The world
wants earthquakes and thunderstorms, or it grows corrupt and stagnant.
This Paris needs a scourge of God, and the moment France gives Germany
a pretext, there will be sackcloth and ashes, or prophecy has died out
of Israel."

"_Qui vivra verra_," ran heedlessly off her tongue. Then, blushing
painfully, she said quickly, "But how do you worship Napoleon and
Moses in the same breath?"

"Ah, my dear Lucy, if your soul was like an Aladdin's palace with a
thousand windows opening on the human spectacle! Self-contradiction
the fools call it, if you will not shut your eyes to half the show. I
love the people, yet I hate their stupidity and mistrust their