“How agitated you are, my dear friend!” sighed Charlotte. “It seems there is still something that can arouse you from your Olympian repose and heartless equanimity, and recall you to earth.”
“‘Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto,’” rejoined Goethe, smiling. “Yes, Charlotte, I learned in Italy to appreciate the vast distance between myself and the great gods of Olympus, and I say with all humility: ‘I am a man, and a stranger to nothing that is human.’”
“I wish you had never been in Italy,” sighed Charlotte.
“And I,” rejoined Goethe, “I wish I had never left Italy to return to Germany, and to exchange a bright sky for a gloomy one.”
“How cruel you are, Goethe!” cried Charlotte, bursting into tears.
“Cruel!” repeated he, in dismay. “Good heavens! are we never to understand each other again! Does Charlotte no longer sympathize with me in my sorrows, as in my joys? Can you not comprehend the deep sadness that fills my heart when I think of Italy?”
“Certainly I can,” cried Charlotte. “Since you told me of your love-affair with the beautiful Leonora, I comprehend and understand all. I know that you left your heart in Italy, and that it is the longing of love that calls you back to the sunny land from the bleak north.”
He gave her a lingering, reproachful look. “Charlotte, it is now my turn to call you cruel, and I can do so with perfect justice. That which you should consider the best proof of my love and friendship—the unreserved and complete confession I made when I told you of this affair—this same confession seems rather to have made you doubt me, than to have carried the conviction to your heart that you are the being I love most dearly on earth!”
“I thank God that I have no confession to make to you,” cried Charlotte. “I have not forgotten you for a moment. My soul and heart were ever true to you, and, while you were kneeling at the feet of the beautiful Leonora, I knelt at the feet of God, and entreated Him to bless and preserve the faithless man who was perhaps betraying me at that very hour, and who now carries his cruelty so far that he dares to complain and lament over his lost Italian paradise in my presence, and—”
“Charlotte, do not speak so, I conjure you,” cried Goethe, interrupting her. “You cannot know what incalculable pain your words inflict. My friend, my beloved, is nothing sacred? is every temple to be overthrown? is every ideal to be destroyed? Charlotte, be yourself once more; do not give way to this petty jealousy. Be the noble, high-souled woman once more, and lay aside these petty weaknesses. Know that the holy bond of love in which we are united is indestructible, and still exists even when fair blossoms of earth spring into life beside it. Be indulgent with me and with us both, and do not desire that I, at forty years of age, should be an ascetic old man, dead to all the little fleeting emotions of the heart.”