Rockel canvassed passionately for the latter, as he seemed to have lost all confidence in the monarchy.  The poor fellow was, indeed, in a very bad way.  He had long ago given up all hope of rising to any position in the musical world; his directorship had become pure drudgery, and was, unfortunately, so badly paid that he could not possibly keep himself and his yearly increasing family on the income he derived from his post.  He always had an unconquerable aversion from teaching, which was a fairly profitable employment in Dresden among the many wealthy visitors.  So he went on from bad to worse, running miserably into debt, and for a long time saw no hope for his position as the father of a family except in emigration to America, where he thought he could secure a livelihood for himself and his dependants by manual labour, and for his practical mind by working as a farmer, from which class he had originally sprung.  This, though tedious, would at least be certain.  On our walks he had of late been entertaining me almost exclusively with ideas he had gleaned from reading books on farming, doctrines which he applied with zeal to the improvement of his encumbered position.  This was the mood in which the Revolution of 1848 found him, and he immediately went over to the extreme socialist side, which, owing to the example set by Paris, threatened to become serious.  Every one who knew him was utterly taken aback at the apparently vital change which had so suddenly taken place in him, when he declared that he had at last found his real vocation—­that of an agitator.

His persuasive faculties, on which, however, he could not rely sufficiently for platform purposes, developed in private intercourse into stupefying energy.  It was impossible to stop his flow of language with any objection, and those he could not draw over to his cause he cast aside for ever.  In his enthusiasm about the problems which occupied his mind day and night, he sharpened his intellect into a weapon capable of demolishing every foolish objection, and suddenly stood in our midst like a preacher in the wilderness.  He was at home in every department of knowledge.  The Vaterlands-Verein had elected a committee for carrying into execution a plan for arming the populace; this included Rockel and other thoroughgoing democrats, and, in addition, certain military experts, among whom was my old friend Hermann Muller, the lieutenant of the Guards who had once been engaged to Schroder-Devrient.  He and another officer named Zichlinsky were the only members of the Saxon army who joined the political movement.  The part I played in the meetings of this committee, as in everything else, was dictated by artistic motives.  As far as I can remember, the details of this plan, which at last became a nuisance, afforded very sound foundation for a genuine arming of the people, though it was impossible to carry it out during the political crisis.

My interest and enthusiasm about the social and political problems which were occupying the whole world increased every day, until public meetings and private intercourse, and the shallow platitudes which formed the staple eloquence of the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness of the whole movement.