HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

then at its culminating point in Paris. Its central idea of
the rehabilitation of the flesh, and the sacredness of labor,
found an enthusiastic champion in him who had so long
denounced the impracticable spiritualism of Christianity.
He, the logical clear-headed sceptic in all matters pertaining
to existing systems and creeds, seems possessed
with the credulity of a child in regard to every scheme
of human regeneration, or shall we call it the exaltation
of the Jew, for whom the Messiah has not yet arrived,
but is none tlie less confidently and hourly expected?
Embittered by repeated disappointments, by his enforced
exile, by a nervous disease which had afflicted
him from his youth, and was now fast gaining upon
him, and by the impending shadow of actual want,
Heine's tone now assumes a concentrated acridity, and
his poetry acquires a reckless audacity of theme and treatment.
His Neue Lieder, addressed to notorious Parisian
women, were regarded as an insult to decency. In literary
merit many of them vie with the best of his earlier songs;
but the daring defiance of public opinion displayed in
the choice of subject excluded all other criticism than
that of indignation and rebuke. There is but a single
ray to lighten the gathering gloom of Heine's life at
this period. In a letter dated April nth, 1835, occurs
his first mention of his liaison with the grisette Mathilde
Crescence Mirat, who afterwards became his wife. This
uneducated, simple-hearted, affectionate child-wife inspired
in the poet, weary of intellectual strife, a love as
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