"You don't mean to say that that crossgrained surly old fellow is the author of the famous ballads!" exclaimed I. "Why, there is a snarl on his visage that might qualify him to sit for a fancy portrait of Churchill in extreme old age!" "He is the last of a great race. Look yonder, at that other venerable figure----" "The gentleman who is twiddling his stick across his arm, as though he were practising the bars of a fandango? Who may he be?" "Arndt, the great composer. Have you men like him in your British parliament?" "Why, I must confess we have not yet thought of ransacking the orchestra for statesmen. Any more?" "Yes. You see that tall grizzled man over the way. That is Anastasius Grün." "Graf von Auersperg? Well, he is a gentleman at least; though, as to poetical pretension, I have always considered him very much on a par with Dicky Milnes. But where are your statesmen, professor? Where are the men who have made politics the study of their lives, who have mastered the theories of government and the science of economics, and who have all the different treaties of Europe at the ends of their fingers?" "As we are commencing a new era," replied Klingemann, "we need none of those. Treaties, ideologically considered, are merely the exponents of the position of past generations, and bear no reference to the future, the tendency of which is lost in the mists of eternity. Such men as you describe we had under the Metternich system, but we have discarded them all with their master." "Then I must say that, idiotically considered, you have done a very foolish thing. Where at least are your financiers?" "My dear friend, I must for once admit that you have stumbled on a weak point. We are very much in want of a financier indeed. Would you believe it? the sum of five florins a-day, which is the amount of recompense allowed to each member of the Assembly, has been allowed to fall into arrear!" "What! do each of these fellows get five florins a-day, in return for cobbling up the Empire? Then it is very easy to see that, unless the exchequer fails altogether, the parliament will never be prorogued." "Certainly not until it has completed the task of adjusting a German constitution," observed the professor. "Which is just saying the same thing in different words. But, pray, what is exciting this storm of wrath in the bosom of the respectable Mr Simon?" "He is merely denouncing the sovereigns and the aristocracy. It is a favourite topic. But look there! that is a great man--ah, a very great man indeed!"