Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/62

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42
FRENCH AFFAIRS.

tion, an indifference offensive to both friend and foe, which his father also preserved even at his execution.[1]

It is certainly most reprehensible that the (poor)[2] face of the King has been chosen for a subject of most small jokes, and that he is hung up in all caricature-shops as the butt of mockery. But when the authorities attempt to restrain this, they only make matters worse. Thus we lately saw how from one suit at law of this kind there came another by which the King was still more compromised. I speak of Philippon, the publisher of a caricature-journal, who defended himself as follows:—

"Should any man wish to find in any caricatured odd face a likeness with that of the King, he could do it as soon as he pleased in any figure, no matter how heterogeneous, so that


  1. This passage, which originally appeared in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, was suppressed in subsequent editions, and is published again in the last by Hoffmann & Campe. The following two pages are omitted in the French edition, their absence being indicated by a blank. In a note to the first French edition Heine remarks as to this: "I have here suppressed a remark which may be very interesting for a German, but not for a French reader, to whom the Pear (in reference to a certain trial), has become a wearisome, threshed-out theme. All blanks which may occur in future will indicate the omission of similar passages." But to the attentive reader of Heine these omissions are very significant.—Translator.
  2. Arme, poor, also pitiable. Given in parenthesis.