battles with the waves on the open sea; or they creep with clinging tenacity up to the heights of mayoralty or the presidency of their club, and shrug their shoulders over the heroic figures which the storm throws down from the columns of fame; and then they tell, perhaps, how they themselves also in their youth ran their heads against the wall, but that later on they reconciled themselves to the wall, for the wall was the absolute, existing by and for itself, which, because it was, was also reasonable, on which account he is unreasonable who will not endure a high, reasonable, inevitable, eternally-ordained absolutism. Ah, these objectionable people, who wish to philosophise us into a gentle slavery, are yet more worthy of esteem than those depraved ones who do not even admit reasonable grounds for the defence of despotism, but being learned in history fight for it as a right of custom, to which men in the course of time have gradually accustomed themselves, and which has so become incontestably valid and lawful. Ah, well! I will not, like Ham, lift up the garment of my fatherland's shame; but it is terrible how slavery has been made with us a matter for prating about, and how German philosophers and historians have tormented their brains to defend despotism, however silly or awkward, as reasonable and lawful. Silence is the honour of slaves, says Tacitus; these philosophers and historians maintain the contrary, and exhibit the badge of slavery in their button-holes. Perhaps, after all, you are right, and I am only a Don Quixote, and the reading of all sorts of wonderful books has turned my head, as it was with the Knight of La Mancha, and Jean Jacques Rousseau was my Amadis of Gaul, Mirabeau my Roland or Agramanto; and I have studied too much the heroic deeds of the French Paladins and the round table of the National Convention. Indeed, my madness and the fixed ideas that I created out of books are of a quite opposite kind to the madness and the fixed ideas of him of La Mancha. He wished to establish again the expiring days of chivalry; I, on the contrary, wish to annihilate all that is yet remaining from that time, and so we work with altogether different views. My colleague saw windmills as giants; I, on the contrary, can see in our present giants only vaunting windmills. He took leather wine-skins for mighty enchanters, but I can see in the enchanters of to-day only leather wine-skins. He held beggarly pot-houses for castles, donkey-drivers for cavaliers, stable wenches for court ladies; I, on the contrary, hold our castles for beggarly pot-houses, our cavaliers for mere donkey-drivers, our court ladies for ordinary stable wenches. As he took a puppet-show for a state ceremony, so I hold our state ceremonies as sorry puppet-shows, yet as bravely as the brave Knight of La Mancha I strike out at the clumsy machinery. Alas! such heroic deeds often turn out as badly for me as for him, and like him I must suffer much for the honour of my lady.