Since that day I have never been able to hear _la religion_ mentioned,
without feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red
with shame."[157] Or in that comment on the fate of Professor Saalfeld,
who had been addicted to writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and
who was a professor at Goettingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of
pedantry and Philistinism. "It is curious," says Heine, "the three
greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them ended miserably.
Castlereagh[158] cut his own throat; Louis the Eighteenth rotted upon
his throne; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Goettingen."
[159] It is impossible to go beyond that.
What wit, again, in that saying which every one has heard: "The
Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her
like his mistress, the German loves her like his old grandmother." But
the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so well known;
and it is by that turn he shows himself the born poet he is,--full of
delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and
striking:--
"And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things may turn out.
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