“You are mistaken,” cried Moritz, eagerly. “You find me in my usual home-dress—I like my ease and freedom, and I am of opinion that mankind will never be happy and contented until they return to their natural state, wearing no more clothing, but glorying in the beauty which bountiful Nature has bestowed upon her most loved and chosen subjects.”
“Sir,” cried the other, laughing, “then benevolent Nature should adapt her climate accordingly, and relieve her dear creatures from the inclination to take cold.”
“You may be right,” said Moritz, earnestly, “but we will not quarrel about it. Will you not keep your promise to reveal to me your name?”
“Tell me your own once more. Tell me if this youth, whom I see before me in this ideal dress, is the same modest young man whom I met at the parade yesterday, and who presented himself as Philip Moritz? Then please to inform me whether you are the Philip Moritz who wrote a spirited and cordial letter to Johann Wolfgang Goethe some years since about the tragedy of ‘Stella,’ the representation of which had been forbidden at that time?”
“Yes, I am the same Philip Moritz, who wrote to the poet Goethe to prove to him, with the most heart-felt sympathy, that we are not all such stupid fellows in Berlin as Nicolai, who pronounced the tragedy ‘Stella’ immoral; that it is only, as Goethe himself called it, ‘a play for lovers.’”
“And will you not be kind enough to tell me what response the poet made to your amiable letter?”
“Proud and amiable at the same time, most gracefully he answered me, but not with words. He sent me his tragedy ‘Stella’ bound in rose-colored satin. [Footnote: “Goethe in Berlin,”—Sketches from his life at the anniversary of his one hundredth birthday.] See there! it is before the bust of Apollo on my writing-table, where it has lain for three years!”
“What did he write to you at the same time?”
“Nothing—why should he? Was not the book sufficient answer?”
“Did he write nothing? Permit me to say to you that Goethe behaved like a brute and an ass to you!”