“You are an angel, Charlotte,” murmured Schiller; “you over-estimate me, and I know only too well how little I resemble the sublime image your lively imagination has made of me.”
He did not look at Charlotte while uttering these words, his manner was embarrassed, and his eyes turned heavenward. He suffered Charlotte to lead him by the hand, and walked at her side like a dreaming, confiding child.
She led him to the darkest and most solitary avenue—to the same retreat in which Goethe had walked restlessly to and fro but a short time before. The little branch of woodbine which Goethe had struck down with his cane, and from which he had plucked a blossom and placed it in his button-hole, still lay in the middle of the road. Charlotte carelessly trod it under foot, never dreaming that these crushed blossoms could have told a tale that might have served her as a warning.
But of women’s hearts the same may be said that Mirabeau said of princes: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing!”
No; they, too, learn nothing and forget nothing, these poor women’s hearts. Never have they learned by the fate of another woman that love is not immortal, and that the vows of men, as Horace says, “are wafted away like the leaves of the forest.” Never have they forgotten these vows, and on the leaves of the forest do they still erect air-castles, which they fondly hope will stand forever.
They seated themselves on a rustic bench that had been placed in a flowery niche, cut out of the hedge that skirted the path in which they had been walking. There they sat, hand in hand, Charlotte’s eyes fastened on Schiller’s noble, thoughtful countenance, with an expression of mingled pain and tenderness.
“Frederick, you have nothing to say to me?”
He raised his eyes slowly, and in the vehemence of her own feelings she failed to observe that his glance was somewhat embarrassed and anxious.
“It is very beautiful here,” he said in low tones. “This solitude, this eloquent silence of Nature, is very delightful, particularly when I can enjoy it at your side, my beloved friend. Our souls are like two harps that are tuned to the same tone, and are so near together that, when the strings of the one are touched, those of the other echo a response in the same accord.”
“God grant that it may ever be so, my Frederick! God grant that no storm break in upon the harmony of these harps!”