good arithmetician and accountant, the jack-fool of the Revolution. He believed stiff and strong that the deficit of the Budget was the only cause of the trouble and the strife, and he figured night and day to raise the deficit, till at last for mere sheer numerals he could see neither men nor their threatening aspect; and yet he had in all his folly one happy thought, which was to assemble the Notables. I say that it was a very happy thought, for it benefited Freedom; without that deficit France might have dragged on much longer in a condition of wretched sickliness. The calling together of the Notables hastened the crisis, and also the cure; and if the bust of Necker should ever be placed in the Pantheon of Freedom, we will place a fool's-cap crowned with patriotic oak-leaves on his head. It is indeed ridiculous to see only persons in great events and circumstances,[1] but far more absurd when they see in these things only figures or numerals. But there are small minds who in the slyest manner attempt
- ↑ Dingen, "things." I have already commented on the unpitying manner in which Germans "ding" this word into our ears to signify everything, from a teapot up to a revolution or the Divinity; but I may here praise Heine's great wisdom in declaring the folly of only seeing individuals in "things." It would seem as if, with his occasional spirit of prophecy, he foresaw this end of the century, when biography—the more gossipy and feeble the better—was to outbalance history, and Jane Carlyle soar in triumph far above Thomas.—Translator.
