honest white beard.  I Stood by him and cried too, and asked him why we were crying.  And then he told me:  ’The Elector expresses you his gratitude’—­then he went on reading, and at the words ‘for your loyal and trusted obedience, and releases you from your duties,’ his tears broke out afresh....  While we were reading, the Elector’s arms were being taken down from the City Hall, the whole place became as terrifyingly quiet as though there were going to be an eclipse of the sun, and all the City Councillors went about hanging their heads as though no one had any more use for them...

“When I woke up next morning, the sun was shining as usual, drums were beating in the streets, and when I came down to breakfast and said good-morning to my father I heard how the barber had whispered to him while he was shaving him that the new Grand Duke Joachim was to receive the homage of his subjects at the City Hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon’s sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies.  Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour cockades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful horsemen, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt button up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows.  I was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us—­my mother was not—­and I hurried to the market-place.  There everything was quite different now.  The world looked as if it had had a new coat of paint.  A new coat-of-arms was hanging on the City Hall, the iron railings on the balcony were covered with tapestry hangings, French Grenadiers were standing sentry, the old City Councillors had put on new faces, and were wearing Sunday clothes, and looked at one another in French and said ‘Bon jour,’ ladies were looking out of all the windows, curious bystanders and smart soldiers thronged the square, and I and the other boys climbed on to the big horse of the Elector’s statue and looked down on the gay crowd."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Heine, Collected Works, i. 228 (Book Le Grand).]

Napoleon and his French soldiers, “marching through the world with songs and shining sabres,” brought the Germans more than this happy thrill of excitement and a supply of new and more elegant princes.  They brought them that which gave strength to their own right arm—­the spirit of Nationality.  “The soul of the German people,” says a recent German writer, “has always lain very deep down, and has seldom come to the surface to become