“Woe is me, if he was not, but is to be!” sighed Goethe, thinking of the dire visitation Moritz had called down upon his head.
Breakfast was announced, and the guests began to seat themselves at the table. The place of honor was generally conceded to be at Goethe’s side, Mr. Jenkins therefore requested Angelica Kaufmann to take the seat on Goethe’s right hand. While he was looking around, considering to whom he should accord the second place of honor on Goethe’s left, Leonora stepped forward and quietly seated herself in the coveted place at her instructor’s side.
“I cannot separate myself from you, maestro,” said she, smiling. “You must repeat, and explain to me, a few words of our lesson. Only think, I have already forgotten the sentence which commences: ‘Sweet it is to die in love.’”
Angelica’s astonished look convinced Goethe that she had heard these words, and this confused him. His embarrassed manner, when he replied to Leonora, betrayed to Angelica the mystery of his sudden change of color when she had first spoken to him on entering the room. “I was mistaken,” said she, in a low voice, and with her soft smile, “it was not a goddess or a muse who visited you. The god of gods himself has kissed your heart and opened your eyes that you might see.”
Yes, these flaming eyes did see, and love had softened the poet’s hard heart with kisses. His soul was filled with rapture as in the days of his first boyish love; every thing seemed changed—seemed to have become brighter and fairer. When he walked in the park with his friends after breakfast it seemed to him that his feet no longer touched the earth, but that his head pierced the heavens, and that he beheld the splendor of the sun and the lustre of the stars. He had gone to the pavilion, where he had first seen Leonora, hoping to find her there now. Amarilla had drawn her aside, after breakfast, and whispered a few words in her ear. Goethe had seen her shudder, turn pale, and reluctantly follow her friend from the room. He hoped to find her in the pavilion. She was, however, not there; a few groups of ladies and gentlemen were standing at the open windows, looking at the beautiful landscape.
Goethe stepped up to one of these windows and gazed out at the lovely lake with its rippling waves and wooded banks. It had never before looked so beautiful. He did not view this picture with the eye of an artist, who desires to reproduce what be sees in oil or aquarelle, but with the eye of an enraptured mortal, before whom a new world is suddenly unfolded, a world of beauty and of love.[43]
Suddenly he heard Amarilla’s merry, laughing voice, and his heart told him that she also was near—she, the adored Leonora! Goethe turned towards the entrance. Yes, there was Leonora; there she stood on the threshold, at her side a young man, with whom she was conversing in low and eager tones.
“Here you are, Signore Goethe,” cried Amarilla, stepping forward. “We have been looking for you everywhere, we—”
“Signora,” said Goethe, interrupting her, and laying his hand gently on her arm, “pray tell me who that young man is with whom your friend Leonora is so eagerly conversing?”
“We have been looking for you to tell you this, and to make you acquainted with young Matteo. He has come to tell Leonora that the rich old uncle whose only heir he is, has suddenly died, and that no impediment to his marriage now exists.”