Toute l'Europe admire, et la jeune Amerique

Se leve et bat des mains du bord des oceans.

Trois jours vous ont suffi pour briser vos entraves.

Vous etes les aines d'une race de braves,

Vous etes les fits des geans!"

 

V. HUGO, Chants du Crepuscule.

 

"Politiken, mine Herrer!"

MORTONS' Lystspil: den Hjemkomne Nabob

 

 

"In France there is revolution!" was the first piece of information which Otto related. "Charles X. has flown with his family. This, they say, is in the German papers."

 

"Revolution?" repeated Rosalie, and folded her hands. "Unhappy France! Blood has flowed there, and it again flows. There I lost my father and my brother. I became a refugee--must seek for myself a new father-land." She wiped away a tear from her cheek, and sunk into deep meditation. She knew the horrors of a revolution, and only saw in this new one a repetition of those scenes of terror which she had experienced, and which had driven her out into the world, up into the north, where she struggled on, until at length she found a home with Otto's grandfather--a resting abode.

 

Everything great and beautiful powerfully affected Otto's soul; only in one direction had he shown no interest--in the political direction, and it was precisely politics which had most occupied the grandfather in his seclusion. But Otto's soul was too vivacious, too easily moved, too easily carried away by what lay nearest him. "One must first thoroughly enter into life, before the affairs of the world can seize upon us!" said he. "With the greater number of those who in their early youth occupy themselves with politics, it is merely affectation. It is with them like the boy who forces himself to smoke tobacco so as to appear older than he really is." Beyond his own country, France was the only land which really interested Otto. Here Napoleon had ruled, and Napoleon's name had reached his heart--he had grown up whilst this name passed from mouth to mouth; the name and the deeds of the hero sounded to him, yet a boy, like a great world adventure. How often had he heard his grandfather, shaking his head, say, "Yes, now newspaper writers have little to tell since Napoleon is quiet." And then he had related to him of the hero at Arcole and among the Pyramids, of the great campaign against Europe, of the conflagration at Moscow, and the return from Elba.

 

Who has not written a play in his childhood? Otto's sole subject was Napoleon; the whole history of the hero, from the snow-batteries at Brienne to the rocky island in the ocean. True, this poem was a wild shoot; but it had sprung from an enthusiastic heart. At that time he preserved it as a treasure. A little incident which is connected with it, and is characteristic of Otto's wild outbreaks of temper when a boy, we will here introduce.

 

A child of one of the domestics, a little merry boy with whom Otto associated a good deal, was playing with him in his garret. Otto was then writing his play. The boy bantered him, pulling the paper at the same time. Otto forbade him with the threat,--"If thou dost that again I will throw thee out of the window!" The boy again immediately pulled at the paper. In a moment Otto seized him by the waist, swung him toward the open window, and would certainly have thrown him out, had not Rosalie fortunately entered the room, and, with an exclamation of horror, seized Otto's arm, who now stood pale as death and trembling in every limb.

 

In this manner had Napoleon awoke Otto's interest for France. Rosalie also spoke, next to her Switzerland, with most pleasure of this country. The Revolution had livingly affected her, and therefore her discourse regarding it was living. It even seemed to the old preacher as though the Revolution were an event which he had witnessed. The Revolution and Napoleon had often fed his thoughts and his discourse toward this land. Otto had thus, without troubling himself the least about politics, grown up with a kind of interest about France. The mere intelligence of this struggle of the July days was therefore not indifferent to him. He still only knew what the horse-dealer had related; nothing of the congregation, or of Polignac's ministry: but France was to him the mighty world-crater, which glowed with its splendid eruptions, and which he admired from a distance.

 

The old preacher shook his head when Otto imparted this political intelligence to him. A king, so long as he lived, was in his eyes holy, let him be whatever sort of a man he might. The actions of a king, according to his opinion, resembled the words of the Bible, which man ought not to weigh; they should be taken as they were. "All authority is from God!" said he. "The anointed one is holy; God gives to him wisdom; he is a light to whom we must all look up!"

 

"He is a man like ourselves!" answered Otto. "He is the first magistrate of the land, and as such we owe him the highest reverence and obedience. Birth, and not worth, gives him the high post which he fills. He ought only to will that which is good; to exercise justice. His duties are equally great with those of his subjects."

 

"But more difficult, my son!" said the old man. "It is nothing, as a flower, to adorn the garland; more difficult is it to be the hand which weaves the garland. The ribbon must be tight as well as gently tied; it must not cut into the stems, and yet it must not be too loose. Yes, you young men talk according to your wisdom! Yes, you are wise! quite as wise as the woman who kept a roasted chicken for supper. She placed it upon a pewter plate upon the glowing coals, and went out to attend to her affairs. When she returned the plate was melted, and the chicken lay among the ashes. 'What a wise cat I have!' said she; 'she has eaten I the plate and left the chicken!' See, you talk just so, and regard things from the same foolish point of view. Do not speak like the rest of them in the city! 'Fear God, and honor the king!' We have nothing to argue with these two; they transact their business between them! The French resemble young students; when these have made their examen artium they imagine they are equal to the whole world: they grow restive, and give student-feasts! The French must have a Napoleon, who can give their something to do! If they be left to themselves they will play mad pranks!"

 

"Let us first see what the papers really say," replied Otto.

 

The following day a large letter arrived; it was from Wilhelm:--

 

"My excellent Otto,--We have all drunk to Otto Thostrup's health. I raised the glass, and drank the health. The friendship's dissonance YOU has dissolved itself into a harmonious THOU, and thou thyself hast given the accord. All at home speak of thee; even the Kammerjunker's Mamsell chose lately thee, and not her work-box, as a subject of conversation. The evening as thou drovest over the Jutland heaths I seated myself at the piano, and played thy whole journey to my sisters. The journey over the heath I gave them in a monotonous piece, composed of three tones, quite dissimilar to that composed by Rousseau. My sisters were near despair; but I told them it was not more uninteresting than the heath. Sometimes I made a little flight, a quaver; that was the heath-larks which flew up into the air. The introduction to the gypsy-chorus in 'Preciosa' signified the German gypsy-flock. Then came the thema out of 'Jeannot and Collin'--'O, joyous days of childhood!'--and then thou wast at home. I thundered powerfully down in the bass; that was the North Sea, the chorus in thy present grand' opera. Thou canst well imagine that it was quite original.

 

"For the rest, everything at home remains in its old state. I have been in Svendborg, and have set to music that sweet poem, 'The Wishes,' by Carl Bagger. His verses seem to me a little rough; but something will certainly come out of the fellow! Thy own wishes are they which he has expressed. Besides this, the astonishing tidings out of France have given us, and all good people here, an electrical shock. Yes, thou............