Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/46

26 and brave. He has shown himself steadfast in adversity, and, what is much more unusual, gentle in prosperity. He is of chaste heart, of touchingly modest manner, with citizen-like simplicity, of good domestic manners, a tender father, especially so towards the beautiful Zarewna, to which tenderness we owe perhaps the cholera, and a still greater evil with which our descendants will do battle, and be duly grateful. Moreover, the King of Prussia is a very religious man; he holds strongly to religion; he is a good Christian; firmly attached to the evangelical confession of faith; he has even himself written a liturgy; he believes in the symbols—ah! I wish he believed in Jupiter, the father of the gods, who punishes perjury, and that he would at last give us the promised constitution.

For is not the word of a king as holy as an oath?

But of all the virtues of Friedrich Wilhelm, that which is most praised is his love of justice, of which the most touching tales are told. As, for instance, that he not long ago paid 11,227 thalers and twenty-two "good groschen" from his private treasury to satisfy the legal demand of a Kyritzer citizen. It is said that the son of the miller of Sans Souci being in straitened circumstances, wished to sell the celebrated