Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/82

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62
FRENCH AFFAIRS.

selves from the rest of the people.[1] Yet, if I on this account doubt the success of a republic in Europe, it still cannot be denied that everything is leading to one; that the republican respect for law in place of veneration of royal personages is showing itself among the better classes, and that the Opposition, just as it played at comedy for fifteen years with a king, is now continuing the same game, and that a republic may be for a short time, at least, the end of the song. The Carlists wish for this as they regard it as a necessary phase in politics which will enable them to attain the absolute royalty of the elder branch. Therefore they now bear themselves like the most zealous republicans. Even Chateaubriand praises the Republic, calls himself a Republican from inclination, fraternises with Marrast, and receives the accolade from Beranger. The Gazette—the hypocritical Gazette de France[2]—now yearns for


  1. Our author here argues a very large estate from very small premises. The Germans, as Hood remarks, are as fond of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world as anybody in it, and the Americans rather more so. Among the latter, the members of widely spread agrarian associations call themselves "Knights," in order to assume, in name at least, something of an air of chivalry and aristocracy; and one Governor once appointed eighteen hundred aides-de-camp, every one with the rank of "Colonel," quorum unus fui. Yet many of these knights and colonels died in battle in defence of Republicanism, or live earnestly devoted to it.
  2. In the French version—"La bonne Gazette de France."