“Why not?”
“Because I can offer you no compensation for the great sacrifice you would be compelled to make, and because the thought that you might live to regret what you had done fills me with horror. You are a lady of rank, accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of an aristocratic house. I am only a poor professor, accustomed to hardships and want, and not in a condition to provide a comfortable home for a wife. Whoever takes me must enter upon life with modest expectations, and begin an existence at my side that offers little for the present but hopes and prospects. It would even require much self-denial on the part of a young girl, who is but just beginning life, to become the wife of a poor professor and poet. How much more would it require on the part of a lady of high rank to exchange a palace for an humble cottage, and to relinquish wealth, rank, and even the son she so dearly loves? What could I give her in return after she had relinquished all these blessings? Charlotte, to live with me is to labor, and labor would wound your tender hands. Therefore, forgive the enraptured poet, who thought only of his own happiness when he dared to hope you might still be his, without reflecting that he had no right to purchase his happiness at the expense of that of his idol.”
“You are right, my dear friend; we must never permit love to make us selfish, and we must consider the happiness of the object of our love more than our own. We will both consider this and act accordingly. You have my happiness at heart; let me, therefore, consider yours. Schiller, I conjure you by the great Spirit of Truth and Love, now surely hovering over us, tell me the truth—answer the question I am about to ask as truthfully as you would before God: Do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively, that my possession can alone make you happy?”
“Charlotte, this is, indeed, a question that I could only answer before God.”
“God dwells in the breast of each human being, and, by the God of Love, who has stretched out His hand over me, I demand of you a truthful answer to my question: Do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively that my possession can alone make you happy?”
A pause ensued—a long pause. The God of Truth and of Love, whose presence Charlotte had so solemnly proclaimed, alone beheld the pale countenances of the two beings who stood face to face with the bitter feeling that nothing on earth is constant, and that all is subject to change and destruction—even love!
“No!” said Schiller, in a low voice, “no, I do not love you so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively. Nor do I believe we would be happy together, for it is only when no passion exists that marriage can unite two beings in an eternal union; and then, Charlotte, you are also too exalted for me, and a woman who is a superior being cannot, I believe, make me happy. I must have a wife whom I can educate, who is my creation, who belongs to me alone, whom I alone can make happy, and in whose existence I can renew my own—a wife who is young, inexperienced, and gentle, not highly gifted, devoted to me, and eager to contribute to my comfort and peace.”[63]
“In a word, a woman who is young,” said Charlotte, with proud composure, “or rather, a young girl who is like a sheet of white paper, on which your love is to write the first word.”
“Yes, Charlotte, so it is! You understand my heart as you have always understood it.”
“I relinquish from to-day all further claim to any such understanding, and I can only give you one last piece of advice, and that is, to ask Mademoiselle von Lengefeld if she is not desirous of being the sheet of paper on which you could write your name. I advise you to marry Mademoiselle von Lengefeld; she seems to possess all the required qualifications: she is not gifted, has no experience, and can certainly not be called a superior being.”