In purely literary satire, too, Heine's methods have a distinct resemblance to those of Aristophanes. An example of this is the hit in _Atta Troll_ at the Swabian school of poets--the cat in the witch's cottage, which is a bewitched Swabian poet, who will turn into a man again when a pure maiden can read Gustav Pfizer's poems on New Year's eve without falling asleep. Another example is the satire in the same poem on the following rather ridiculous lines of Freiligrath's _Der Mohrenfürst_ (The Moorish Prince) with their far-fetched simile: "Aus dem schimmernd weissen Zelte hervor Tritt der schlachtgerüstete fürstliche Mohr; So tritt aus schimmernder Wolken Thor Der Mond, der verfinsterte, dunkle, hervor."[12] [12] From the glistening white tent the royal Moor issues forth, armed for the fray; even as the moon, gloomy and dark, issues from the glistening gate-way of the clouds. It is a poem about a negro king, who is taken prisoner, brought to Europe, and made to play the drum outside a circus; while doing so he thinks of his former greatness, and beats his drum to pieces. The idea of the black man at the opening of the tent resembling the moon appearing through the clouds is undoubtedly comical. In _Atta Troll_ the red tongue hangs out of the bear's black jaws as the moon shows herself through white clouds. And towards the end of the poem Heine tells us how, in the Jardin des Plantes, he makes acquaintance with a negro caretaker, who confides to him that he is Freiligrath's negro king, that he has married a white Alsatian cook, whose feet remind him of the feet of the elephants in his native land, and whose French sounds to him like the negro tongue. She feeds him so well that he has developed a little round black stomach, which shows itself through the opening of his shirt like a black moon, appearing from behind white clouds. And there is something especially Aristophanic in the recklessly brutal satire upon Platen in the second part of the _Reisebilder_. Certain amusing artifices in their literary warfare are common to the Greek and the German comic poet. In _The Frogs_, in the contest between Æschylus and Euripides (a poet whom Aristophanes hates), Æschylus tacks a refrain, equivalent to "spoiled his verse," to everything that Euripides recites. In the _Reisebilder_ Heine revenges himself by making Hyacinth alternately tack the words _von vorn_ (from the front) and _von hinten_ (from behind) to the end of Platen's lines, thereby maliciously perverting their meaning.