“These sophistries are incomprehensible to me,” said she, sharply, “and it seems to me that what you call fleeting emotions of the heart are simply infidelity and a desecration of the love which you vowed would be eternal and unchangeable.”
Goethe bowed his head sadly. “It really looks as though we could no longer understand each other,” said he, gently. “I admit, however, that I am to blame, and beg you to pardon me. In the future I will be more cautious. I will make no more communications calculated to offend you.”
“That is, you will withdraw your confidence, but you will not cease to do that which must offend me.”
His countenance quivered, his eyes sparkled with anger, and his cheeks turned pale, but he struggled to repress the indignant words that trembled on his lips.
Charlotte turned pale with alarm. Goethe looked sternly on his beloved for the first time. She read indifference in his features for the first time. A loud cry of anguish escaped her lips, and the tears gushed from her eyes.
Goethe did not attempt to console her, but sat at her side in silence, his gaze resting gloomily on her countenance. “It is a cruel destiny that women should be compelled to give vent to their grief in tears, for their beauty is seldom enhanced thereby,” said he to himself. “The tears of offended love are becoming in youthful faces only, and Charlotte’s is not youthful enough. She looks old and ugly when she cries!”
Poor Charlotte!
Late in the evening of this day Goethe left his house through a side door that led from his garden into a narrow little street. His hat was pressed down over his forehead, and a long cloak enveloped his figure. In former days, before his trip to Italy, he had often slipped through this small door in the early hours of the morning, and in the twilight, to take the most direct and quiet route to his beloved Charlotte; the side door had also been often opened to admit the beautiful Madame von Stein when she came to visit her dear friend Goethe. To-day, Goethe had waited until it grew so dark that it was impossible that his curious neighbors could observe his departure, and on this occasion he did not direct his footsteps toward the stately house in which madame the Baroness von Stein resided. He took an entirely different direction, and walked on through streets and alleys until he came to a poor, gloomy, little house. But a light was still burning in one window, and the shadow of a graceful, girlish figure flitted across the closed blind. Goethe tapped twice on the window, and then the shadow vanished. In a few moments the door was cautiously opened. Had any one stood near he would soon have observed two shadows on the window-blind—two shadows in a close embrace.