What wit, again, in that saying which every one has heard: "The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, the German loves her like his old grandmother." But the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so well known; and it is by that turn he shows himself the born poet he is,--full of delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and striking:-- "And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smithfield. The inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais Royal after another. _But the German will never quite abandon his old grandmother_; he will always keep for her a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her fairy stories to the listening children."[160] Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both the weakness and the strength of Germany; pedantic, simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable Germany? And Heine's verse,--his _Lieder?_ Oh, the comfort, after dealing with French people of genius, irresistibly impelled to try and express themselves in verse, launching out into a deep which destiny has sown with so many rocks for them,--the comfort of coming to a man of genius, who finds in verse his freest and most perfect expression, whose voyage over the deep of poetry destiny makes smooth! After the rhythm, to us, at any rate, with the German paste in our composition, so deeply unsatisfying, of-- "Ah! que me dites-vous, et qne vous dit mon âme? Que dit le ciel a l'aube et la flamme à la flamme?" what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like-- "Take, oh, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn--"[161] or-- "Siehst sehr sterbeblässlich aus, Doch getrost! du bist zu Haus--"[162]