A Little Perplexity.
Their Highnesses of Weimar and Meiningen were living in the same hotel. I received one day an invitation to dinner. My mind was so preoccupied with the Court of Weimar, that I did not think it necessary more particularly to inform myself, especially as I had not the presumption to imagine that any notice would be taken of me by the Duke of Meiningen. Accordingly I go full dressed to the "Roman Emperors," and making my way to the apartments of the Weimar family find them empty; being informed that the Duke and his suite are with his Highness of Meiningen, I betake myself thither, and am kindly received. Supposing that this is only a morning visit, or that perhaps the two Dukes are to dine together, I await the issue. Suddenly, however, the Weimar suite sets itself in motion, and I of course follow; but instead of returning to their own apartments they go straight down stairs and into their chariots, and I am left alone in the street.
Now, instead of inquiring into the matter, and adroitly and prudently seeking some solution of it, I, with my usual precipitancy, went straight home, where I found my parents at supper. My father shook his head, while my mother made every possible excuse for me. In the evening she told me in confidence, that after I had left the table, my father had said, that he wondered very much how I, generally acute enough, could not see that in that quarter they only wished to make a fool of me and to laugh at me. But this did not move me: for meanwhile I had met with Herr von Dürkheim, who in his mild way brought me to book with sundry graceful and humorous reproaches. I was now awakened from my dream, and had an opportunity to express my most sincere thanks for the favor intended me contrary to my hope and expectation, and to ask forgiveness for my blunder.
After I had on good grounds determined to accept their friendly offers, the following arrangement was made. A gentleman of the Duke's suite who had stayed behind in Carlsruhe, to wait for a landau which was building in Strasburg, was to be by a certain day in Frankfort, and I was to hold myself in readiness to set off directly with him for Weimar. The hearty and gracious farewell with which the young sovereigns took their leave of me, the friendly behaviour of the courtiers, made me look forward most anxiously to this journey, for which the road seemed so pleasantly to smoothe itself.
But here, too, accidents came in to complicate so simple an arrangement, which through my passionate impatience became still more confused, and was almost quite frustrated. Having announced the day of my departure, I had taken leave of everybody, and after packing up in haste my chattels, not forgetting my unprinted manuscripts, I waited anxiously for the hour which was to bring the aforesaid friend in the new landau, and to carry me into a new country, and into new circumstances. The hour passed, and the day also; and I since, to avoid a second leave-taking and the being overrun with visits, I had given out that I was to depart early in the morning, I was obliged to keep close to the house, and to my own room, and had thus placed myself in a peculiar situation.
But since solitude and a narrow space were always favorable to me, and I was now compelled to find some employment for these hours, I set to work on my "Egmont," and brought it almost to a close. I read over what I wrote to my father who had acquired a peculiar interest in this piece, and wished nothing more than to see it finished and in print, since he hoped that it would add to his son's reputation. He needed something of this sort to keep him quiet, and to make him contented; for he was inclined to make very grave comments on the non-arrival of the carriage. He maintained that the whole affair was a mere fiction, would not believe in any new landau, and pronounced the gentleman who stayed behind to be a phantom of the air. It was, however, only indirectly that he gave me to understand all this; but he only tormented himself and my mother the more openly; insisting that the whole thing was a mere piece of court pleasantry, which they had practised upon me in consequence of my former escapades, and in order to sicken and to shame me, had put upon me a disgraceful mockery instead of the expected honor.
As to myself, I held fast to my first faith, and congratulated myself upon these solitary hours, disturbed by neither friends nor strangers, nor by any sort of social distraction. I therefore wrote on vigorously at "Egmont," though not without inward mortification. And this frame of mind perhaps suited well with the piece itself, which, agitated by so many passions, could not very well have been written by one entirely passionless.
A Disappointment.
Thus passed eight days, and I know not how many more, when such perfect imprisonment began to prove irksome. Accustomed for many years to live under the open sky, and to enter into society on the most frank and familiar terms, in the neighbourhood too of one dearly beloved, from whom indeed I had resolved to part, but from whom, so long as I was within the circle of her attraction, I found it difficult to absent myself—all this begun to make me so uneasy, that there was danger lest the interest of my tragedy should suffer, and my inventive powers be suspended through my impatience. Already for several evenings I had found it impossible to remain at home. Disguised in a large mantle, I crept round the city, passing the houses of my friends and acquaintances, and not forbearing to walk up to Lili's window. Her house was a corner one, and the room she usually spent her evenings in was on the ground floor; the green shades were down, but I could easily remark that the lights stood in their usual places. Soon I heard her singing at the piano; it was the song, Ah! why resistless dost thou press me? which I had written for her hardly a year before. She seemed to me to sing with more expression than ever; I could make out every word distinctly; for I had placed my ear as close as the convex lattice would permit. After she had sung it through, I saw by the shadow which fell upon the curtain that she got up and walked backwards and forwards, but I sought in vain to catch the outline of her lovely person through the thick curtains. Nothing but the firm resolve to tear myself away, and not to afflict her with my presence, but actually to renounce her, and the thought of the strange impression which would be made by my re-appearance, could have determined me to leave so dear a neighbourhood.
Several more days passed away, and my father's suggestion seemed daily to become more probable, since not even a letter arrived from Carlsruhe to explain the reasons of the delay. I was unable to go on with my poetic labors, and now, in the uneasiness with which I was internally distracted, my father had the game to himself. He represented to me, that it was now too late to change matters, that my trunk was packed, and he would give me money and credit to go to Italy; but I must decide quickly. In such a weighty affair, I naturally doubted and hesitated. Finally, however, I agreed that if, by a certain hour, neither carriage nor message came, I would set off, directing my steps first of all to Heidelberg and from there over the Alps, not, however, going through Switzerland again, but rather taking the route through the Grisons, or the Tyrol.