have induced every editor to think himself
safe. It was not so. My friend had an
immense success with his paper, and got, in a
few months, no fewer than fifteen thousand
subscribers. This would have yielded him
a considerable income, even after English
notions. All the German governments; and,
most of all, that of Prussia, became almost
frantic; for my friend was as cautious as
clever, and they could not get at him under
any legal pretext. It was before the year
eighteen hundred and forty-eight, and such
pretexts were still required. One day,
however, when I was at dinner wondering at my
friend's vacant place, I received a hurried,
open, pencil-note from him, dated from prison;
by which he informed me of his having been
arrested, and of the judge's having very
reluctantly consented to let him go, on depositing
five hundred thalers in cash. Fortunately
the money was to be had. I took it myself
to the judge, and delivered my friend.

Of course, I was curious to know his
offence, and was not a little amused when he
showed me the lines of his paper for which
the Austrian government had impeached
him. He had spoken of an Austrian chief of
artillery having opposed the reducing of
military service from fourteen years to eight,
objecting that it would be impossible for
recruits to become good artillerymen in eight
years; and the writer exclaimed, "that a fellow
who could not learn his service in eight years
must be indeed a potenzirter Austrian;" which
meant, that he must be many times sillier
than the Austrians generally are thought to
be in the north of Germany. My friend was
condemned to three months' imprisonment,
without being allowed to compound for his
punishment by a payment of money; which
was customary in press transgressions. Very
soon afterwards the paper was prohibited
without any legal proceeding—nay, against
law and the constitution. With the same
right they might have shut up the shop of
any grocer for selling cigars manufactured by
the special consent of the government.

When my friend published another journal,
that was prohibited also, and we got a hint
that he would be arrested. By stratagem, I
got his passport from the bureau where it
was deposited, and he left Leipzig, going to
the next Prussian town; for he was a subject
of Prussia. Taught by necessity, my friend
was well versed in the law, and adhered so
strictly to it, that they could find no "legal
pretexts" for a long time; but he was annoyed
in every manner. At last, the Prussian
government—who would put him aside at
any cost—sent one of his books to Magdeburg,
that the law officers and judges there might
pick out from it matter to impeach him for
high treason, or any other nonsense that
promised a rich harvest of prison. The Magdeburg
courts were much puzzled by this desire
of the government; for they could find no
crime in the book, and returned it at last to
Berlin. But very soon it came back, with a
reproof, and many passages in the book
marked with a red pencil. Cardinal Richelieu
said, "Give me five written words of
a man, and I shall find matter in them to
have him hanged." My friend was summoned
before the court, and impeached on
Majestats-Beleidigung—lesæ majestatis, is I think the
technical name. When the judges showed
him the offending passage, he took the
Landrecht (provincial law) smilingly up
from the table, turned up the paragraph
relating to the offence attributed to him, and
read aloud, "Such a criminal shall be
dragged to the place of execution sitting
upon a cowskin and there crushed by a
wheel, &c. (gerädert werden von unten auf)."
And all this, for the flesh-coloured tricots of
Lola Montez! The whole court of justice
could not help laughing outright; for the
thing was too ludicrous.

In his paper my friend had mentioned how
Lola Montez had horsewhipped an officer of
the police, and how she had been condemned
to half a year in the house of correction, but
had been pardoned by the king, and concluded,
"Well, I wonder whether I should have been
pardoned also, for having committed such a
crime? Possibly, but not very likely; for if,
even in the scale of justice, a pair of
flesh-coloured tricots weighs heavier than my
steel-pen, how much the more will they not put out
of its equilibrium the balance of grace?"

Yes; the judges condemned him, laughingly,
to two years' imprisonment, and the
loss of the national cockade. About this hated
sign of bondage to an absolute Hohenzollern
my friend cared not a pin; but its loss involved
the loss of most of his civil rights. Therefore
he laid an appeal against this verdict,
and it was altered to only one year of
imprisonment, which he endured, in the citadel
of Magdeburg.

So much for the press. Now I shall show
how the police work in the vineyard of the
Lord.

There was, in Königsberg, a dissenting
congregation of about eight thousand members,
belonging to a Protestant sect spread
all over the empire. Of course any legal
pretexts to be met with were available for
annoying and vexing these dissenters; but
the police used the most dastardly and base
means to ruin them, besides. They induced,
for instance, all persons employed in the
police, and even private persons, to give no
work to any tradesmen; to buy no goods of
merchants belonging to this persecuted sect
—nay, keepers of public-houses and tea or
coffee gardens were forbidden to sell anything
to members of it, under pain of the
withdrawal of their licences. This was a serious
thing for these innkeepers, and they requested
the Reverend Mr. Rupp, then minister of
the congregation, to communicate these police
measures to his parishioners, lest they might
bring innocent men to trouble and ruin.