"Five years afterwards I came for the first time to Paris, and at a very noteworthy period. The French had just performed their July revolution, and the whole world was applauding. This piece was not so horrible as the earlier tragedies of the Republic and the Empire. Only some thousand corpses remained upon the stage. The political Romanticists were not very contented, and announced a new piece in which more blood should flow, and the executioner have more to do. "Paris delighted me by the cheerfulness which prevails there, and which exercises its influence over the most sombre minds. Singular! Paris is the stage on which the greatest tragedies of the world's history are performed--tragedies at the recollection of which hearts tremble and eyes become moist in the most distant lands; but to the spectator of these tragedies it happens as it happened to me once at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, when I went to see the _Tour de Nesle_ performed. I found myself sitting behind a lady who wore a hat of rose-red gauze, and this hat was so broad that it obstructed the whole of my view of the stage, and I saw all the tragedy only through the red gauze of this hat, and all the horror of the _Tour de Nesle_ appeared in the most cheerful rose-light. Yes, there is such a rose-light in Paris, which makes all tragedies cheerful to the near spectator, so that his enjoyment of life is not spoilt there. In the same way all the terrible things that one may bring in his own heart to Paris there lose their tormenting horror. Sorrows are singularly soothed. In this air of Paris all wounds are healed quicker than anywhere else; there is in this air something as generous, as kind, as amiable as in the people themselves. "What most pleased me in the people of Paris was their polite bearing and distinguished air. Sweet pine-apple perfume of politeness! how beneficently thou refreshedst my sick soul, which had swallowed down in Germany so much tobacco smoke, sauerkraut odour, and coarseness! The simple words of apology of a Frenchman, who, on the day of my arrival, only gently pushed against me, rang in my ears like the melodies of Rossini. I was almost terrified at such sweet politeness, I, who was accustomed to German clownish digs in the ribs without apology. During the first week of my stay in Paris I several times deliberately sought to be jostled, simply to delight myself with this music of apology. But the French people has for me a certain touch of nobility, not only on account of its politeness, but also on account of its language. For, as you know, with us in the north the French language is one of the attributes of high birth; from childhood I had associated the idea of speaking French with nobility. And a Parisian market-woman spoke better French than a German canoness with sixty-four ancestors.