Would he ever be understood? He did not preach any definite doctrine to attract adherents. He was no Börne, with set rules and formulas for the emancipation of mankind; no self-centered Goethe to inspire romantic cults. He was carrying on guerilla warfare, shooting at whosoever was hostile to human progress. He understood the course of human progress better than that fanatical Börne who dreamt of bringing about a millennium with one leap. Human progress is gained by taking a leap forward, then half a step backward, then forward again, until the goal is reached. Reaction is as much a part of human progress as revolution. Revolution is only a link in the chain of evolution. He dreaded Communism, he despised Absolutism, he detested the mediocrity of Republicanism, even more than Philistinism. He was concerned with the freedom of the spirit even more than with the freedom of the body. Must he go on being misunderstood? He did not care for the opinion of his enemies—it did not matter to him that they charged him with want of character—but it grieved him to learn that even his friends and admirers failed to understand him. Only a few days before he had bared his heart in a letter to a friend. Would any one ever understand his inner struggles and strife? “We do not expect our friends to agree with us but we expect them to understand the motives of our actions,” he pleaded. He could not deny that he had sipped from the sweetness of life since his arrival in Paris. A new world was opened to him. At last he had found himself free, breathing freely, moving about without restraint, without the conscious restraint that Prussian tyranny had imposed upon him. Not only the tangible shackles but even the invisible fetters—those that make one’s inner consciousness cower—had fallen away. From the first day he stepped upon French soil no one reminded him, by look or gesture or remotest insinuations, of the virtues, or vices, of his forefathers. Having brought with him only a few letters of introduction, and as yet wholly unknown to the reading public in France, his poems and ready wit had quickly won him a large circle of friends and admirers. He had already met Victor Hugo, George Sand, Adolph Thiers, General LaFayette, and formed friendships with Balzac and Gautier and Alexandre Dumas; and, as in Berlin, he had found here an admirer who wished to be his patroness. She was a princess, who, while she did not possess the brilliancy and depth of Frau Varnhagen, was a woman of culture and had an innate appreciation of poetry. At her _soirées_ one met not only the literary and artistic celebrities of the day but also renowned statesmen and diplomats.