"Do you know," he went on, "I've often fancied it was I who gave Heine the line of thought he developed in his sketch of German philosophy, that our revolution will be the outcome of our Philosophy, that in the earthquake will be heard the small still voice of Kant and Hegel. It is what I tried to say the other day in my address on Fichte. It is pure thought that will build up the German Empire. Reality--with its fragments, Prussia, Saxony, etc.--will have to remould itself after the Idea of a unified German--Republic. Why do you smile?" he broke off uneasily, with a morbid memory of his audience drifting away into the refreshment room. "I was thinking of Heine's saying that we Germans are a methodical nation, to take our thinking first and our revolution second, because the heads that have been used for thinking may be afterwards used for chopping off. But if you chopped off heads first, like the French, they could not be of much use to philosophy." Lassalle laughed. "I love Heine. He seemed my soul's brother. I loved him from boyhood, only regretting he wasn't a republican like Börne. Would he could have lived to see the triumph of his prediction, the old wild Berserker rage that will arise among us Teutons when the Talisman of the Cross breaks at last, as break it must, and the old gods come to their own again. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. The canting tyrants shall bite the dust, the false judges shall be judged." "That is how I like you to talk." He smote the table with his fist. His own praises had fired him, though his marvellous memory that could hold even the complete libretti of operas had been little in doubt as to Heine's phrasing. "Yes, the holy alliance of Science and the People--those opposite poles! They will crush between their arms of steel all that opposes the higher civilization. The State, the immemorial vestal fire of all civilization--what a good phrase! I must write that down for my _Kammergericht_ speech." "And at the same time finish this Heine business, please, and be done with that impertinent demoiselle. What! she must have letter for letter! Of course it's a blessing she ceased to correspond with you. But all the same, just see what these creatures are. No sympathy with the wear and tear of your life. All petty egotisms and vanities! What do they care about your world-reaching purposes? Yes, they'll sit at your feet, but their own enjoyment or mental development is all they're thinking of. These Russian girls are the most dreadful. I know hundreds like your Sophie. They're a typical development of our new-fangled age. They even take nominal husbands, merely to emancipate themselves from the parental roof. I wonder she didn't play you that trick. And now she's older and has got over her pique, she sees what she has lost. But you will not be drawn in again?" "No; you may rely on that," said Lassalle. Her face became almost young.