Patrons finally intervened. With their aid he went to Heidelberg, and for two full years, 1848-1850, he there pursued literary and historical research. The historian, Hettner, took great interest in the young Swiss. Next he went to Berlin, and during the ensuing five years he wrote and studied in a desultory manner there. Great attention was paid him by Goethe's intimate friend, Varnhagen von Ense, and the latter's wife, the "seeress," Rahel, who drew the shy young man into their wide literary circle, comprising for two decades the _beaux esprits_ of the capital. But his bluntness of speech, his sturdy Swiss republicanism, often gave offense. For that was one of the remarkable points about Gottfried Keller: despite his long residence on German soil and the flattering reception accorded him by the intellectual _élite_ there, he remained a thorough democrat, an uncompromising friend of the plain people, a fearless champion of Swiss free government, a hater of tyranny in any form, a despiser of monarchs and their favors. Among his poems, later collected into a bulky tome, there are many that breathe defiance to royalty by "divine grace." Much of this sentiment of anti-monarchism has crept into his first great work, the "Gruener Heinrich." This, a sort of autobiography in guise of a big novel, alive with adventure as well as thoughts on men and things, he first published from 1854 to 1855, but it was afterward recast in characteristic fashion, 1879-1881. In a manner of speaking, his "Gruener Heinrich" is also a confession of faith. There are many didactic passages in it; the whole book, in fact, breathes the convictions of its author. This is still more the case with the last great work from Keller's pen, "Martin Salander," where the frequent political and social precepts interwoven into the text of the story form, from the purely artistic viewpoint, a serious blemish. It is generally conceded that Keller's masterpiece is "Seldwyla Folks" ("Die Leute von Seldwyla"), which appeared in two sections, the first of these in 1856, the second in 1874. From this group of weird, fantastic tales the three forming the contents of this book are taken. About the origin of the title Keller himself has written in his inimitably oracular and whimsical style. The name and the town itself are wholly fictitious. They represent a sort of collective traits of a number of ancient, unprogressive Swiss towns, left head over heels in medievalism, in outworn customs, with some peculiar features exclusively their own. Each tale is a jewel cut and polished, a distinctive literary entity, something that may not be duplicated elsewhere in the whole realm of letters, with a full flavor of its own. Where, for instance, in the literature of any tongue, is to be found a humorous-sarcastic story of the raciness of "The Three Decent Combmakers"?