that Gans is preaching
Christianity, and trying to convert the children of Israel. If this is
conviction, he is a fool; if hypocrisy, a knave. I shall not give up
loving him, but I confess that I should have been better pleased to hear
that Gans had been stealing silver spoons. That you, dear Moser, share
Gans's opinions, I cannot believe, though Cohen assures me of it, and
says that you told him so yourself. I should be sorry, if my own baptism
were to strike you more favorably. I give you my word of honor--if our
laws allowed stealing silver spoons, I should not have been baptized."
Again he writes mournfully: "As, according to Solon, no man may be
called happy, so none should be called honest, before his death. I am
glad that David Friedlaender and Bendavid are old, and will soon die.
Then we shall be certain of them, and the reproach of having had not a
single immaculate representative cannot be attached to our time. Pardon
my ill humor. It is directed mainly against myself."

"Upon how true a basis the myth of the wandering Jew rests!" he says in
another letter. "In the lonely wooded valley, the mother tells her
children the grewsome tale. Terror-stricken the little ones cower close
to the hearth. It is night ... the postilion blows his horn ... Jew
traders are journeying to the fair at Leipsic. We, the heroes of the
legend, are not aware of our part in it. The white beard, whose tips
time has rejuvenated, no barber can remove." In those days he wrote the
following poem, published posthumously:[101]

TO AN APOSTATE

"Out upon youth's holy flame!
Oh! how quickly it burns low!
Now, thy heated blood grown tame,
Thou agreest to love thy foe!

And thou meekly grovell'st low
At the cross which thou didst spurn;
Which not many weeks ago,
Thou didst wish to crush and burn.

Fie! that comes from books untold--
There are Schlegel, Haller, Burke--
Yesterday a hero bold,
Thou to-day dost scoundrel's work."

The usual explanation of Heine's formal adoption of Christianity is that
he wished to obtain a government position in Prussia, and make himself
independent of his rich uncle. As no other offers itself, we are forced
to accept it as correct. He was fated to recognize speedily that he had
gained nothing by baptism. A few weeks after settling in Hamburg he
wrote: "I repent me of having been baptized. I cannot see that I have
bettered my position. On the