HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

tender and constant as it had been sudden and passionate.
A variety of circumstances having combined to reduce
Heine to extreme want, he had recourse to a step
which has been very severely censured. He applied for
and received from the French government a pension
from the fund set aside for "all those who by their zeal
for the cause of the Revolution had more or less compromised
themselves at home or abroad." Now that the
particulars of the case are so well known, it would be
superfluous to add any words of justification; it can only
excite our sympathy for the haughty poet doomed to
drain so bitter a cup. He was pressed to take the oath of
naturalization, but he had too painful experience of the
renunciation of his birthright ever to consent to a repetition
of his error. He would not forfeit the right to
have inscribed upon his tomb-stone: "Here lies a German
poet."
In 1844 ^^^ uncle Solomon died; and, as there was no
stipulation in the banker's will that the yearly allowance
hitherto granted to Heinrich should continue, the
oldest heir Karl announced that this would altogether
cease. This very cousin Karl had been nursed by Heine
at the risk of his own life during the cholera-plague of
1832 in Paris. The grief and excitement caused by his
kinsman's ingratitude fearfully accelerated the progress
of the malady which had long been gaining upon the
poet, and which proved to be a softening of the spinal
cord. One eye was paralyzed, he lost the sense of taste,
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