again returning to power all the irreconcilable aristocrats who have for forty years fought unto life and death the French people as the representatives of democratic ideas. This time the ancient hatred will give way to more practical interests, and they will willingly see the more dangerous rival of the East and his satellites fought by French arms, and all the more so because they will weaken one another. Yes, the English will specially spur on the Gallic cock to fight with the autocratic eagle, and, eager to see the sight, stare with their long necks over the Channel, and applaud as at a cockpit, and bet many thousands of guineas on the result.
Will the great gods above in the blue pavilion regard this spectacle indifferently? Will they, like Englishmen of heaven, look down on the strife of nations, heartless and with leaden stare, unheeding our cries for aid and our bloody wounds?[1] Or was the poet right who declared that as we hate monkeys because they of all the mammalia most resemble us, and thereby wound our pride, so the gods hate men, who, made in their own image, have such great and aggravating
- ↑ The two following passages are omitted in the French version. They are, however, in Heine's highest and most characteristic style. Fortunately, the singe-tigre, as Voltaire called him, is still flourishing.
