IV


DEEDS NOT WORDS

As he wrote--as he wrote his best, while the shafts of the spirit
lightened in his brain--Heine would sometimes feel a mysterious figure
standing behind him, muffled in a cloak, and holding, beneath the cloak,
something that gleamed now and then like an executioner's axe. For a
long while he had not perceived that strange figure, when, on visiting
Germany, after fourteen years' exile in Paris, as he crossed the
Cathedral Square in Cologne one moonlight night, he became aware that it
was following him again. Turning impatiently, he asked who he was, why
he followed him, and what he was hiding under his cloak. In reply, the
figure, with ironic coolness, urged him not to get excited, nor to give
way to eloquent exorcism:

"I am no antiquated ghost," he continued. "I'm quite a
practical person, always silent and calm. But I must tell you,
the thoughts conceived in your soul--I carry them out, I bring
them to pass.

"And though years may go by, I take no rest until I transform
your thoughts into reality. You think; I act.

"You are the judge, I am the gaoler, and, like an obedient