No doubt there was a species of real development at the root of this change. The "rights of humanity," which he had so warmly defended in his treatise _Ueber den Ursprung und die obersten Prinzipien des Rechts_ ("On the Origin and Main Principles of Rights"), now seemed to him only of importance to the statesman as "elementary preparatory studies." The theory of these rights appeared to him to stand in much the same relation to statecraft as the mathematical theory of projectiles does to bomb-throwing. And now, by slow degrees, he arrives at the narrow view that it is not the people, but the Government, which is the chief power in the state. He regards the co-operation of the people in legislation as a mere form; liberty has shrunk into willing, glad obedience. Intercourse with Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the influence of the æsthetic ideas of the period on the need for harmony between private and public life, somewhat softened the severity of these principles, and the English constitution became Gentz's ideal. When Frederick William III. ascended the throne, he actually felt impelled to present a petition to his Majesty, in which, in eloquent language, he called upon him to concede liberty of the press--the very liberty which he described a few years later as the source of all evil. The loyal Goethe was astounded by this attempt "to coerce" the sovereign, and as the King took no notice of the appeal, Gentz at once let the matter drop, and did his best to bury it in oblivion. From this time onward he was in the pay of England; he did not exactly sell himself, but he accepted regular and considerable monetary rewards for his political activity in English interests. And Gentz needed money. He gambled for high stakes, and lived a life of perpetual dissipation and revelry with actresses and ballet-dancers. At times this was interrupted by fits of extreme sentimentality, when, as he writes, he lived "a pleasant, but still wild life" with his own wife. In April 1801 he notes in his diary: "Profound emotion over the death of a dog." During a visit to Weimar, where he met all the literary notabilities of the day, he became desperately enamoured of the poetess, Amalie von Imhoff, and made determined resolutions to lead a better life. But he had hardly returned to Berlin before he wrote: "Result of my Weimar resolutions --on December 23rd lost all I possessed at hazard." For a time he went on writing letters of six or eight sheets to Amalie von Imhoff; then he fell madly in love with the actress, Christel Eigensatz, and forgot everything else. "_Maintenant c'est le délire complet_," he writes in his diary. In the midst of all this, his wife leaves him and applies for a divorce. The evening she leaves, Gentz tries to forget the unpleasantness in playing _trente et quarante_. When Berlin had for many reasons become disagreeable, nay, impossible, he accepted the offer of an Austrian Government appointment in Vienna.