There are many pathetic passages. In one of the suburbs the watchman passes a house where a poor wretch lies in his last agonies; he passes the lunatic asylum, and the dread of madness that always seizes him here is mingled with a strange feeling of attraction; he passes the cemetery, where his poor father, who took his own life, lies in a disdained, neglected corner; and on his way back he passes the palace, where the prince tosses sleeplessly on his pillow of down, while the sentry sleeps soundly standing in his box. A night-watchman might easily have had some of these feelings--he would never have expressed them thus; the mask is perpetually falling off. There are one or two most masterly and natural expressions of popular indignation, for example the tirade occasioned by the sight of light in the sickroom of a cringing courtier whose extortions have impoverished his country: "Warum er nicht schläft? warum er in Wuth die Spitzen am Hemde zerissen? Ein gutes Gewissen schläft überall gut, und nirgends ein schlechtes Gewissen. Er hat an des Landes Mark, die Schlang', sich voll gefressen, gesogen, Er hat--ein Menschenleben lang!--gestohlen, gelogen, betrogen."[11] But there are also expressions of hatred and exasperation which we feel belong to another class of society. We actually find the watchman giving frivolous advice to a beautiful young lady who has been married to an old reprobate, telling her how she may best revenge herself upon him. At times his thoughts and reveries take a higher flight. He is leaning on an old cannon, which stands on the rampart, shining and dumb. Once its wheels rolled over dead and living on the field of victory; once it gave the signal for the dread onslaught, for beside the touch-hole there is an N. surmounted by the imperial crown. Now its voice is only heard when some wretched prisoner has escaped from his dungeon, or on the occasion of his Majesty's birthday, or when a princess is born. "Patience!" cries the watchman to the cannon; "it may be that ere long thou wilt once more pour thy balls upon the enemy; but keep silent in the meantime, old veteran, or they will spike thee as they are gagging us." Here the mask is completely thrown off. After Dingelstedt had left Hesse-Cassel, he published _Nachtwächters Weltgang_ ("The Night-Watch man's World Patrol"), in which the poet is no longer the unsophisticated night-watchman--but the cultivated revolutionary. He falls foul of bad kings, of the governments of Hesse-Cassel, Prussia, and Hanover, and of false German patriotism: "What, gentlemen, is a German patriot?--A man who serves the Lord on Sunday and the king on week-days. What are the objects of his desire?--Office, a title, and a ribbon for himself, bread for his lawful offspring, and legitimate sovereigns for his country.--Away with you, German patriot! The temple is no place for you! You are a Judas, whose treacherous kiss has been the death of liberty!"