This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and, from official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until he lost all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless, without a family and giving up even his mother country, finding that everything had to be done over again in this world, which he had not created. After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been a simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men once more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He took a wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died a believer. {396}This ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich Heine, who laughed so bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of him as a dealer in rabbit skins. [Illustration: 416] [Illustration: 419] XVI. {399}Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent Women.--_Children’s Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and the Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead,’ the World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals._ Well? Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to “shut up shop.” The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander like their patients. Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it. The reader must judge for himself. My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done. For instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the history of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like beings by eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of almost intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other sex in its material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the advantage over men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the models of all virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally beaten, {401}it is true, but they were also grandly honored, and in Germany especially people burnt incense before them, long before they smoked tobacco in their presence. [Illustration: 421]