HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

^Tntrotiuction.
xxxi
"' Am I then really Kaiser ? Ah, I
forgot, it is the fool who tells me so !'
"' Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the
air of thy prison makes thee so desponding
! when once thou hast got thy rights
again, thou wilt feel once more the bold
imperial blood in thy veins, and thou
wilt be proud like a Kaiser, and violent,
and gracious, and unjust, and smiling,
and ungrateful, as princes are.'
"' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool,
when I am free, what wilt thou do
then ? '
"' Iwill then sew new bells on to my cap.'
"' And how shall I recompense thy
fidelity ?'
" ' Ah, dear master, by not leaving me
to die in a ditch!' "
I wish to mark Heine's place in
modern European literature, the scope
of his activity, and his value, I cannot
attempt to give here a detailed account
of his life, or a description of his separate
works. In May 1831 he went over
his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed himself
in his new Jerusalem, Paris. There,
henceforward, he lived, going in general
to some French watering-place in the
summer, but making only one or two
short visits to Germany during the rest
of his life. His works, in verse and
prose, succeeded each other without
stopping; a collected edition of them,
filling seven closely-printed octavo volmnes,
has been published in America; *
*A complete edition has at last appeared ia Germany.