“A beautiful picture,” cried Goethe, joyfully—“a picture that would inspire me to indite a poem.”
“Write one, and call it for a souvenir ‘The Eagle and the Dove.’ Make it a reality, my eagle youth, bear off the white lamb to your eyry, and let the world, with its affected morality, say what it likes. How can you bear to see the one you love at the side of another man? Tell me, confess to me, is not the beautiful Charlotte von Stein your beloved?”
“Not in the sense you mean, duke, not in the vulgar sense of the word. I love her, I adore her, with a pure and holy sentiment. I would not that Charlotte should have cause to blush before her children on my account. She would be desecrated to me if I, in my inmost soul, could imagine the blush of shame upon her cheek, or that her eye could brighten at other than great, beautiful, and noble acts. I adore her, and to me she is the ideal of the purest and sweetest womanhood. I rejoice that she is as she is, like clear mountain crystal—transparent and so brightly pure, that one could mirror himself therein. She stands above all other women, and to her belong all my thoughts, and would, even if I were wedded to another. To me she is the most beautiful of the beautiful, the purest of the pure, the most graceful of the graceful, and all my thoughts are in perfect harmony with hers. Now, duke, if it is agreeable to you, knowing my feelings, to call Charlotte von Stein my beloved, she is so in the most elevated sense of the word.”
“Ah! you poets, you poets,” sighed the duke, smiling.
“A streak of madness in you all, though I will grant that it is divine.”
“Say rather that Whit-Sunday comes to us every day, and the divine Spirit descends daily upon us poets, and causes us to speak in unknown tongues.”
“I will say that you are the god Apollo descended from heaven, and with gods one may not dare to dispute. They act differently in their sphere than we mortals upon earth. I will be contented if our ways cross from time to time, and we can once in a while walk on together a good piece the way of life in friendship and harmony. If it would please my Wolf, I propose to turn toward beloved Weimar, the dear place, half village, half city. For my part I am finished here, my business with General von Mollendorf is accomplished. As I told you previously, I have had made known to the king my refusal to allow recruiting in my duchy. I could not consent for the present. In short, I have spoken as my secretary Wolfgang Goethe has recorded.[Footnote: This memorial upon recruiting is found. “Correspondence of the Grand Duke Carl August and Goethe,” part, i., p. 4.] General Mollendorf has waived his demand for the present—and to-day we have had the concluding conference, and if it is agreeable to my secretary, we might set off this afternoon and pass a day at Dessau, and then on to Weimar.”
“Oh, gladly will I do it; it seems as if a star from heaven had twinkled to me to follow it, for at Weimar is centred all my happiness! I prefer a lowly cabin there to all the splendor and palaces of a city.”
“Then you agree with me, that this magnificently vile Berlin does not enchain you in her magic net?”
“No, she holds me not, though it has been pleasant to take a peep into it (like a child into a curiosity-box). I have seen ‘Old Fritz.’ His character, his gold, and his silver, his marbles, his apes and parrots, and even his town curtains please me. It is pleasant to be at the seat of war at the very moment that it threatens to break forth. It has gratified me to witness the splendor of the royal city, the life, order, and abundance, that would be nothing if thousands of men were not ready to be sacrificed; the medley of men, carriages, horses, artillery, and all the arrangements. All are mere pins in the great clock-work, only puppets whose motion is received from the great cylinder, Fredericus Rex, who indicates to each one the melody they must play, according to one of the thousand pins in the rotary beam.“[Footnote: Goethe’s own words.—See Goethe’s “Correspondence with Frau von Stein,” part i., p. 168. Riemer, “Communications about Goethe,” part ii., p. 60.]