She said yes, but she was very thoughtful after Schiller had gone. “I would that my husband were here, and that the word of separation had already been spoken!” she murmured.
Several months passed before her husband arrived in Weimar. Madame had not been able to endure this uncertainty, this continued hypocrisy. She had written to her husband, confessing her love and her relation to Schiller, and begging him, as her best friend, to give her his advice and to promote her happiness.
Her husband had replied at once as follows: “My dear friend, for the very reason that I am, as you say, your best friend, I will treat your letter as though I had not received it. It is obliterated from my memory, and I only know that I love and esteem you as the mother of my little boy, and that the dearest wish of my heart is your happiness. Let us leave these little afflictions of the heart to time, the great healer. I am coming to Weimar in a few months, and we shall then see if time has not exercised its healing properties on yourself and on the heart of an easily-excited poet. If this should not be the case, however, and you should then repeat the words written in your letter, it will still be time to see whether the desires of your heart can be gratified without detriment to our son’s interests. Let us, therefore, postpone the decision for a few months.”
He had also written to Schiller, but without any reference to Charlotte’s communications. His letter was full of quite hearty sympathy, profound admiration for the poet, and earnest assurances of friendship. He concluded by announcing that he would come to Weimar in a few months, and that Schiller would find him ready to do him any service, and to make any sacrifice for him that the poet could expect at the hands of a friend.
Schiller folded the letter thoughtfully, and a glowing color suffused itself over his cheeks. “He will come,” said he to himself, in a low voice. “It will be a strange meeting for me, I already blush with shame when I think of it. He loves me, he calls me his friend, and yet he knows all! Will I really have the courage to demand this sacrifice of a friend, and—” asked he in a low voice—“and do I really so ardently desire this sacrifice? I came here to seek consolation from a dear friend, and I found love—love that has drawn me into the whirlpool of passion. We are both being driven around in its eddying circles, and who knows but that marriage is the sunken reef on which our hearts will ultimately be shipwrecked. Save us from a violent end, thou Spirit of the Universe; save me from such an end, thou genius of poetry; let me fly to some peaceful haven where I can find safety from the storms of life! There is a mystery in every human breast; it is given to God only and to time, to solve it. Let us, therefore, wait and hope!”
When her husband arrived in Weimar a few months afterward, this mystery seemed to have sunk deeper in Charlotte and Schiller’s hearts; neither of them had the courage to lift the veil and speak the decisive word. Charlotte was paler and quieter than usual, and her eyes were often stained with tears, but she did not complain and made no attempt to bring her husband to an explanation.
Only once, when she held her little boy, who had just recovered from an attack of illness, lovingly in her arms, her husband stepped up to her, and gave her a kind, inquiring look:
“Could you ever make up your mind to leave this child, Charlotte—to deliver it over to the care of a stranger.”
“Never, no, never!” cried she, folding her arms tenderly around her delicate little boy. “No, not for all the treasures—for all the happiness earth can offer, could I part with my darling child!”
“And yet you would be compelled to do so, if you should lay aside the name your child’s father bears,” said her husband, gently.