“Then you love me so boundlessly as to be ready to sacrifice to me the liberty you have scarcely regained?”
“Can you doubt it, Marianne?” asked Gentz, tenderly pressing her beautiful hands to his lips.
“Are you in earnest, my friend?” she said, smiling. “So you offer your hand to me? You want to marry me?”
Gentz started back, and looked at her with a surprised and frightened air. Marianne laughed merrily.
“Ah!” she said, “your face is the most wonderful illustration of Goethe’s poem. You know it, don’t you?” And she recited with ludicrous pathos the following two lines:
“‘Heirathen, Kind, ist wunderlich Wort,
Hor ich’s, mocht ich gleich wieder fort.’”
“Good Heaven, what a profound knowledge of human nature our great Goethe has got, and how proud I am to be allowed to call him a friend of mine—Heirathen, Kind, ist wunderlich Wort.”
“Marianne, you are cruel and unjust, you—”
“And you know the next two lines of the poem?” she interrupted him. “The maiden replied to him:”
“‘Heirathen wir eben,
Das Ubrige wird sich geben.’”