'Burger Her::.en hat kein, aber auch gar kein Organ de1 Venera::.ion!' All were satisfied with the lack of the 'bump of reverence' in me, and so was I .
Hereupon h e informed me that h e was a great phrenologist, and had not only written a book on Gall's14 system but had even 1 1 A pi!rilphrilse of two lines from SchiiiPr's The Glove: Und him•in mit brdiichtigem Schriu
F. in Lowr trill . . . . (A.S. )
1 2 VolunlePrs. (R.)
!3 U nc!Prgra(hwtt•s i n tlwir first )"Pilr werP cillled 'foxps' in GPrmiln uni·
YPrsitiPs. ( Tr. )
14 Gi!ll, Frilnz Joseph ( I i58- 1 828 ) , illl Austrian doctor, the disco\·erer of phrPnology. ( A .S. )
Paris-Italy-Paris
363
selected his Amalie from it, after first feeling her skull. He assured me that the bump of the passions was almost completely absent in her, and that the back part of the skull where they are located was almost flat. On these grounds, sufficient for a divorce, he married her.
Struve was a very queer fish: he ate nothing but Lenten food, with the addition of milk, drank no wine, and kept his Amalie on a similar diet. He thought that this was not enough, and he went every day to bathe with her in the Arve, the water of which scarcely reaches a temperature of eight degrees in the middle of summer, since it flows down from the mountains so swiftly that it has not time to get warm.
Later on, it often happened that we talked of vegetarianism. I raised the usual objections: the structure of the teeth, the great loss of energy in the assimilation of vegetable fibre, and the lower development of the brain in herbivorous animals. He listened blandly without losing his temper, but stuck to his opinion. In conclusion, apparently wishing to impress me, he said:
'Do you know that a man always nourished on vegetable food so purifies his body as to be quite free from smell after death?'
'That's very pleasant,' I replied ; 'but what advantage will that be to me? I won't be sniffing myself after death.'
Struve did not even smile, but said to me with serene conviction:
'You will speak very differently one day!'
'When my bump of reverence develops,' I added.
At the end of 1 849 Struve sent me the calendar he had newly devised for 'free' Germany. The days, the months, everything had been translated into an ancient German jargon difficult to understand ; instead of saints' days, every day was dedicated to the memory of two celebrities-Washington and Lafayette, for instance; but to make up for this every tenth day was devoted to the memory of the enemies of mankind-Nicholas and Metternich, for instance. The holidays were the days when remembrance fell upon particularly great men, such as Luther, Columbus and so on. In this calendar Struve had gallantly replaced the twenty-fifth of December, the birth of Christ, by the festival of Amalie!
Meeting me in the street one day, he said among other things that there ought to be published in Geneva a journal common to all the exiles, in three languages, which would carry on the struggle against the 'seven scourges' and maintain the 'sacred
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
364
fire' of the peoples that were now crushed by reaction. I answered that of course it would be a good thing.
The publishing of papers was at that time an epidemic disease: every two or three weeks new schemes were started, specimen copies appeared, prospectuses were sent about, then two or three numbers would come out-and it would all disappear without a trace. People who were incapable of anything none the less considered themselves competent to edit a paper, scraped together a hundred francs or so, and spent them on the first and last issue. Struve's intention, therefore, did not surprise me at all; but I was surprised, very much so, by his calling upon me at seven o'clock the next morning. I thought some misfortune had happened, but Struve, after calmly sitting down, brought a sheet of paper out of his pocket and said, as he prepared to read it: 'Burger, since you and I agreed yesterday on the need to publish a magazine, I have come to read you the prospectus of it.'
When he had read it he informed me that he was going to l\1azzini and many others to invite them to meet at Heinzen's for a conference. I went to Heinzen's too: he was sitting fiercely at the table, holding a manuscript in one hug!"' paw; the other he held out to me, muttering thickly, 'Bii.rgcr, Plat::J'
Some eight people, French and German, were present. Some representative of the people in the French legislative Assembly was making an estimate of the costs, and writing something in slanting lines. "When Mazzini came in Struve proposed reading the prospectus that had been written by Heinzen. Heinzen cleared his throat and began reading it in German, although the only language common to us all was French.
Since they had not the faintest shadow of a new idea, the prospectus was only the thousandth variation of those democratic lucubrations which constitute the same sort of rhetorical exercise on revolutionary texts as church sPrmons are on those of the Bible. Indirectly anticipating a charge of socialism, Heinzen said that the democratic republic would of itself solve the economic question to the general satisfaction. The man who did not flinch from a demand for two million heads was afraid that his organ would be considered communistic.
I urged some objPction to this when the reading was finished, hut from his abrupt replies, from Struve's intervention and from the gf'stures of the French deputy I perceived that we had been invited to the council to accept Heinzen's and Struve's prospectus, not at all to discuss i t; it was in complete agreement, by
Paris-Italy--Paris
365
the way, with the theory of Elpidifor Antiokhovich Zurov, the military governor of Novgorod.
Mazzini listened with a melancholy air, but agreed, and was almost the first to subscribe for two or three shares. 'Si omnes consentiunt ego non dissentio,' I thought a La Grimm in Schiller's Robbers, and I too subscribed.
But the subscribers appeared to be too few; however often the French deputy calculated and verified, the sum subscribed was insufficient.
'Gentlemen,' said Mazzini, 'I have found a means of overcoming this difficulty: publish the journal at first only in French and German; as for the Italian translation, I shall print any remarkable articles in my ltalia del Popolo-that will save you onethird of the expenses.'
To be sure! what could be better! '
Mazzini's proposition was accepted by everybody and h e grew more cheerful. I was awfully amused, and very eager to show him that I had seen the trick he had played. I went up to him and watched for a moment when no one •vas near us; then I said:
'How capitally you got out of the journal ! '
'Well,' h e observed, 'an Italian part i s really superfluous, you know.'
'So are the two others ! ' I added.
A smile glided over his face and vanished as quickly as though it had nPver been there.