'The maid stood by the ocean, And long and deep sighed she, With heartfelt sad emotion The setting sun to see.'"[4] "But, my dear Salomon," said Eva, "we know our Heine by heart." "'Sweet maiden, why this fretting? An olden trick is here,'" Salomon continued to recite unabashedly, and then added-- "Heine pleases me actually better than Schiller; one feels more at ease with him. Everything about Schiller is more solemn, one must appear in full dress, and be led about in nothing but state apartments, where one feels shy of sitting down. With Heine, one enters a cosy drinking party; all sit down in shirt sleeves, and one hastens to pull off one's own coat." "That would be like playing nine-pins," said Eva. "Certainly, the poet always meets the Nine; he scoffs at false sentiment, and in life, as in society, there is so much false sentiment; it is just as in the Palais Royal in Paris, where I went last holidays with mamma. The shops with sham diamonds and precious stones are to be found side by side with those full of genuine jewellery, and, at the first glance, one cannot distinguish the imitation. Therefore, our thanks are due to the man who has taught us the true and the false by his scoffing remarks. Even with Schiller, false jewels of sentiment are to be found. Laura at the piano! excuse me. I have seen many a girl sit at the piano, who did not play badly either, but never have I thought when doing so of 'Cocytus' waves of tears,' or of 'the suns which arise from out the giant arms of chaos,' or even the verse, 'Lips, cheeks, burned and quivered.' That is not the way people kiss! I have never noticed anything of the sort. Or even Thecla, who looks upon her lover as a good angel, who would carry her pick-a-back up the mountains! What a picture of bad taste! And we are to rave about that? Fräulein, will you know my secret now?" "Not yet, Herr Salomon." "Then, you see, a great deal of poetical rubbish is talked about these sunsets. After all, it is quite natural, and it is connected with the earth's revolution that the sun seems to set, and its rays break into gay colours through the denser strata of vapour on the horizon. But it is really childish to go into ecstasies about those few bright colours; it is the same pleasure that the soap-bubbles inspire in childish minds; and yet such things are sung in all metres of verse. And there is also an ode, which we had to learn by rote, and begins with the lines-- 'Sun, thou sinkest, Sun, thou sinkest, Sink in peace then, oh, thou sun!'