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His direct political action was null, and this is neither to be wondered
at nor regretted; direct political action is not the true function of
literature, and Heine was a born man of letters. Even in his favorite
France the turn taken by public affairs was not at all what he wished,
though he read French politics by no means as we in England, most of us,
read them. He thought things were tending there to the triumph of
communism; and to a champion of the idea like Heine, what there is gross
and narrow in communism was very repulsive. "It is all of no use," he
cried on his death-bed, "the future belongs to our enemies, the
Communists, and Louis Napoleon[151] is their John the Baptist." "And
yet,"--he added with all his old love for that remarkable entity, so
full of attraction for him, so profoundly unknown in England, the French
people,--"do not believe that God lets all this go forward merely as a
grand comedy. Even though the Communists deny him to-day, he knows
better than they do, that a time will come when they will learn to
believe in him.


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