“Yes, Trude, I will allow you to stay,” she replied, very graciously. “You will be cunning, Trude, if you try to persuade Marie to accept the rich suitor, for when she does I will give you two hundred thalers.”
“I will do all I can to get it. Can I remain here until Marie is married?”
“Yes, you have my permission for that.”
“I thank you, Frau von Werrig. Now, general, I will bring you some warm coverings right away.”
CHAPTER XVI. CHARLES AUGUSTUS AND GOETHE.
“Now tell me, Wolf,” asked Duke Charles Augustus, stretching himself comfortably on the sofa, puffing clouds of smoke from his pipe—“are you not weary of dawdling about in this infamously superb pile of stones, called Berlin? Shall we any longer elegantly scrape to the right and to the left, with abominable sweet speeches and mere flattering phraseology, in this monster of dust and stone, of sand and sun, parades and gaiters? Have you not enough of blustering generals, of affected women? and of running about the streets like one possessed to see here a miserable church, or there a magnificent palace? Are you not weary of crawling about as one of the many, while at home you stride about as the only one of the many? And weary also of seeing your friend and pupil Carl August put off with fair promises and hollow speeches like an insignificant, miserable mortal, without being able to answer with thundering invectives. Ah! breath fails me. I feel as if I could load a pistol with myself, and with a loud report shoot over to dear Weimar. Wolf, do talk, I beg you, I am tired out; answer me.”
“I reply, I shoot, my dear Carl,” cried Goethe, laughing. “I was out of breath myself from that long speech. Was it original with my dear prince, or did he memorize it from Klinger’s great ‘Sturm-und-Drang’ tragedy? It reminded me of it.”
“Do you mean to accuse me of plagiarism, wicked fellow? I grant that you are right, my cunning Wolf, it was a lapsus. I did think of Klinger, and I sympathized with his youthful hero Wild, who declared that, among the sweetest pleasures, he would like to be stretched over a drum, or exist in a pistol-barrel, the hand ready to blow him into the air.”
Goethe shoved aside the breakfast-table, straightened his delicate form, with his noble head proudly erect, and one foot in advance, extended his right arm, giving one loud hurrah! “Now, for once, a tumult and noise, that thought may turn about like a weathercock. This savage noise has already wrought its own benefit. I begin to feel a little better. Rage and expand, mad heart, quicken yourself in hurly-burly-burly-burly!” [Footnote: From Klinger’s tragedy “Sturm und Drang.”]