and forest-like wigs which I had just left in discontent; and when the Fatherland faded from my eyes I found it again in my heart.  And, therefore, it may be that my voice quivered in a somewhat lower key as I replied to the sallow man—­“Dear sir, do not scold the Germans!  If they are dreamers, still many of them have conceived such beautiful dreams that I would hardly incline to change them for the waking realities of our neighbors.  Since we all sleep and dream, we can perhaps dispense with freedom; for our tyrants also sleep, and only dream their tyranny.  We awoke only once—­when the Catholic Romans robbed us of our dream-freedom; then we acted and conquered, and laid us down again and dreamed.  O sir! do not mock our dreamers, for now and then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom.  No one can foresee the turn which things may take.  The splenetic Briton, weary of his wife, may put a halter round her neck and sell her in Smithfield.  The flattering Frenchman may perhaps be untrue to his beloved bride and abandon her, and, singing, dance after the Court dames (courtisanes) of his royal palace (palais royal).  But the German will never turn his old grandmother quite out of doors; he will always find a place for her by his fireside, where she can tell his listening children her legends.  Should Freedom ever vanish from the entire world—­which God forbid!—­a German dreamer would discover her again in his dreams.”

While the steamboat, and with it our conversation, swam thus along the stream, the sun had set, and his last rays lit up the hospital at Greenwich, an imposing palace-like building which in reality consists of two wings, the space between which is empty, and a green hill crowned with a pretty little tower from which one can behold the passers-by.  On the water the throng of vessels became denser and denser, and I wondered at the adroitness with which they avoided collision.  While passing, many a sober and friendly face nodded greetings—­faces whom we had never seen before, and were never to see again.  We sometimes came so near that it was possible to shake hands in joint welcome and adieu.  One’s heart swells at the sight of so many bellying sails, and we feel strangely moved when the confused hum and far-off dance-music, and the deep voices of sailors, resound from the shore.  But the outlines of all things vanished little by little behind the white veil of the evening mist, and there remained visible only a forest of masts, rising long and bare above it.

The sallow man still stood near me and gazed reflectively on high, as though he sought for the pale stars in the cloudy heaven.  And, still gazing aloft, he laid his hand on my shoulder, and said in a tone as though secret thoughts involuntarily became words—­“Freedom and equality! they are not to be found on earth below nor in heaven above.  The stars on high are not alike, for one is greater and brighter than another; none of them wanders free, all obey a prescribed and iron-like law—­there is slavery in heaven as on earth!”