Des tranquilles hauteurs de la philosophie, Ta pitié contemplait, avec des yeux sereins, Les fantômes changeants du songes de la vie, Tant de rêves détruits, tant de projets si vains[10]. [Sidenote: Bayreuth.] From the height of a palace, it is easy to look down with calm eyes upon the poor devils who pass along the street; but those lines are none the less mightily true.... Who could feel them better than myself? I have seen so many phantoms defile through the dream of life! At this very moment, have I not been looking on the three royal larvæ in the Castle in Prague and on the daughter of Marie-Antoinette at Carlsbad? In 1733, just a century ago, what was it occupied men's minds? Had they the least idea of what is now? When Frederic was married, in 1733, under the rough tutelage of his father, had he, in _Mathew Laensberg_[11], seen M. de Tournon[12] Intendant of Bayreuth and leaving his intendance for the "Prefectship" of Rome? In 1933, the traveller passing through Franconia will ask of my shade if I could have guessed the facts of which he will be a witness. While I was breakfasting, I read some lessons which a German lady, young and pretty, of course, was writing to a master's dictation: "_Celui_ qu'il _est content, est riche. Vous et_ je _nous avons peu d'argent; mais nous sommes_ content. _Nous sommes_ ainci _à mon avis plus riches que tel qui a_ un _tonne d'or, et il est...._" That is true, mademoiselle, you and _je_ have little money; you are satisfied, as it seems, and you laugh at a ton of gold; but, if, by chance, I were not satisfied, you must agree that, for me, a ton of gold might be rather pleasant. On leaving Bayreuth, one goes up. Slender pruned firs represented to me the pillars of the mosque at Cairo or the Cathedral of Cordova, but shrunk and blackened, like a landscape reproduced in the _camera obscura._ The road runs on from hill to hill and valley to valley: the hills wide, with a tuft of wood on their brows; the valleys narrow and green, but badly watered. At the lowest point of these valleys, one sees a hamlet marked by the _campanile_ of a little church. The whole of Christian civilization was formed in this way: the missionary, become a parish-priest, stopped; the Barbarians cantoned themselves around him, like flocks gathering round the shepherd. In former days, those remote habitations would have made me dream more than one kind of dream; to-day, I dream not at all and am nowhere at ease.