The comedy of the famous. – Famous men who need their fame, e.g. all politicians, never choose allies and friends without ulterior motives: from one they want a piece of the splendour and reflected splendour of his virtue; from another the fear-inspiring aspects of certain dubious qualities that everyone knows him to have; from another they steal the reputation of his idleness, his lying in the sun, because it serves their own ends to appear inattentive and sluggish at times – it conceals the fact that they actually lie in wait; now they need a visionary around; now an expert; now a thinker; now a pedant, as if he were their present self; but just as quickly they don’t need them any more! And so the surroundings and exteriors of famous men die off continually, even while everything seems to be pushing to get into these surroundings and lend them their character; in this, they are like big cities. Their reputation is continually changing, like their character, for their changing methods demand these changes and push forward now this, now that real or fictitious characteristic onto the stage. Their friends and allies belong, as I said, to these stage properties. What they want, however, must stand all the much more firmly and unshakeably and be splendidly seen from afar; and this, too, sometimes requires its comedy and its theatrics.