The Sethes and Haeckels of the earlier generation were not merely zealous jurists, but also characteristic figures of Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic Prussia. Christoph Sethe, the patriarch of the maternal line, was Privy Councillor of the Prussian Government at Cleve at the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth century, though he was then young. When the French occupied the country he accompanied the Government to Münster, in 1802, which had become a Prussian town. But the stalwart German was pursued even there by the detested Napoleonists. He was sent to Düsseldorf as General Procurator in 1808, and came into dangerous conflict with the French authorities shortly before the Emperor’s fall. The mobilisation of the troops for the campaign of 1812 had led to a disturbance amongst the workers. Sethe’s sense of patriotism and justice was affronted by the arbitrary proceedings of the French. He was summoned to give an account at Paris, the chief object being to retain him—the most powerful official in the Rhine district and not a very safe man—as a hostage during the crisis. It was at Paris that he made the finest phrase of his life. Roederer, the minister, tried to intimidate him with the threat that the Emperor might have a dangerous man like him shot at any moment. “You will have to shoot the law first,” replied Sethe. We are often reminded of this saying in the biography of Sethe’s grandson. If Haeckel had been burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno, he would have thought of nothing but the “law”—the law of truth and freedom that they would burn with him. Christoph Sethe continued to play an important part in the service of Prussia, to which, of course, he returned, together with the Rhinelands, after Napoleon’s fall. He was destined to live through the terrible reaction under Frederic William the Third, and the fiery outburst under his successor. After the early death of his wife their youngest daughter, Bertha, managed his house and large family.