On the evening of writing this letter he went with his father to a _Converzatione_ in the _Palazzo Colonna_; here they found the dark marble gallery, full of antiques and pictures, perverted from a chamber of art and a parlor into a fencing-school; all arms and tongues of Romans were in commotion and in conflict about the latest developments of the French Revolution, and most in its favor. It was at the time when almost all Europe forgot for some days, what it had been for centuries learning from the political and poetic history of France, that this same France could more easily become a magnified than a great nation. The Knight alone gave himself up rather to the works of art than to the sham-fight in his neighborhood. At length, however, he heard distant words which announced how Albano, like all the youth of that day, was marching exultingly after the _Queen of Heaven_, _Liberty_, following on in the train of eternal freemen and eternal slaves after the _equality_ of the times; then he drew nearer and remarked, in his manner, "That the Revolution was something very great; but that he found, however, in great works, e. g. in a Colosseum or obelisk, in the bloom of a science, in war, in the heights of astronomy, of physics, less to admire than others, for it was merely a mass in time or space that created it, a considerable multitude of _little_ forces. But only great ones a man should respect.[83] In revolution he saw more of the former than of the latter. Freedom was as little gained as lost in _one_ day; as weak individuals in a state of intoxication were exactly the opposite of themselves, so too there was a sort of intoxication of the multitude by multitude."