For a still longer period the guarding of the gates was entrusted to the students; the unheard-of splendour which accordingly became associated with this post drew fresh aspirants to the spot from far and near.  Every day huge chartered vehicles discharged at the Halle Gate whole bands of the boldest sons of learning from Halle, Jena, Gottingen, and the remotest regions.  They got down close to the guards at the gate, and for several weeks never set foot in an inn or any other dwelling; they lived at the expense of the Council, drew vouchers on the police for food and drink, and knew but one care, that the possibility of a general quieting of men’s minds would make their opportune guardianship superfluous.  I never missed a day on guard or a night either, alas! trying to impress on my family the urgent need for my personal endurance.  Of course, the quieter and really studious spirits among us soon resigned these duties, and only the flower of the flock of undergraduates remained so staunch that it became difficult for the authorities to relieve them of their task.  I held out to the very last, and succeeded in making most astonishing friends for my age.  Many of the most audacious remained in Leipzig even when there was no guard duty to fulfil, and peopled the place for some time with champions of an extraordinarily desperate and dissipated type, who had been repeatedly sent down from various universities for rowdyism or debt, and who now, thanks to the exceptional circumstances of the day, found a refuge in Leipzig, where at first they had been received with open arms by the general enthusiasm of their comrades.

In the presence of all these phenomena I felt as if I were surrounded by the results of an earthquake which had upset the usual order of things.  My brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, who could justly taunt the former authorities of the place with their inability to maintain peace and order, was carried away by the current of a formidable movement of opposition.  He made a daring speech at the Guildhall before their worships the Town Council, which brought him popularity, and he was appointed second-in-command of the newly constituted Leipzig Municipal Guard.  This body at length ousted my adored students from the guard-rooms of the town gates, and we no longer had the right of stopping travellers and inspecting their passes.  On the other hand, I flattered myself that I might regard my new position as a boy citizen as equivalent to that of the French National Guard, and my brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as a Saxon Lafayette, which, at all events, succeeded in furnishing my soaring excitement with a healthy stimulant.  I now began to read the papers and cultivate politics enthusiastically; however, the social intercourse of the civic world did not attract me sufficiently to make me false to my beloved academic associates.  I followed them faithfully from the guard-rooms to the ordinary bars, where their splendour as men of the literary world now sought retirement.