Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/128

108 leather, then there will be one man in the world more miserable than man has ever been—a man who, by his wretched haggling, tradesman-like small-mindedness, will have been guilty of betraying his country, and who will bear all the serpents of remorse in his heart and all the curses of mankind on his head. The damned in hell will then, to console one another, relate the torments of this man—the torments of Casimir Perier.

What a terrible responsibility weighs on this one man! A shudder steals over me when I come near him. As if banned by an unholy spell, I lately stood near him one hour, and beheld that gloomy figure which has intruded so boldly between the people and the sun of July. "When this man falls," I said, "the great eclipse of that sun will be ended, the tricoloured flag on the Pantheon will gleam again as if inspired, and the trees of liberty bloom once more! This man is the Atlas who bears upon his shoulders the Bourse, and the House of Orleans, and all the State fabric of all Europe; and when he falls, there will fall with him the whole shop in which the noblest hopes of humanity are bargained for,