Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/134

114 and Turkish embassy relate. His whole art and knowledge now consist of a few played-out old diplomatic tricks, which are always rattling in his tin brain-pot. His own peculiar political ideas are like the great straps which the Carthaginian queen cut from a cowhide, and therewith spanned a whole country. The cycle of ideas of the good man is very great and taking in much land, but he himself is leather and naught else. Perier once said of him, "He has a great idea of himself, and it is his only one idea."

I have placed the Cupid of the Imperial régime, as Sebastiani was called, by the Hercules of the juste milieu epoch, or Perier, that the latter may appear in all his greatness. I would, indeed, rather magnify than dimmish him, and yet I cannot refrain from declaring that even at the sight of him there comes into my memory a form by which he seems to be as small a man as is Sebastiani placed by him. Is it the spirit of satire which recalls antitheses? Or has Casimir Perier really some resemblance to the greatest Minister who ever ruled in England—with George