This last phrase threw me back upon my remembrances. I thought of the daughter-in-law of the poet,—the trusted friend, the constant companion, the devoted and careful nurse of his last years. It accounted for the unrivalled influence which apparently she possessed—I will not say over his mind—but in his mind, in his affections; for in her he found truly eine Natur—a piece of nature, which could bear even his microscopic examination. All other beings who approached Goethe either were, or had been, or might be, more or less modified by the action of that universal and master spirit. Consciously, or unconsciously, in love or in fear, they bowed down before him, and gave up their individuality, or forgot it, in his presence; they took the bent he chose to impress, or the colour he chose to throw upon them. Their minds, in presence of his, were as opake bodies in the sun, absorbing in different degrees, reflecting in various hues, his vital beams; but HER'S was, in comparison, like a transparent medium, through which the rays of that luminary passed,—pervading and enlightening, but leaving no other trace. Conceive a woman, a young, accomplished, enthusiastic woman, who had qualities to attach, talents to amuse, and capacity to appreciate, Goethe; who, for fourteen or fifteen years, could exist in daily, hourly communication with that gigantic spirit, yet retain, from first to last, the most perfect simplicity of character, and this less from the strength than from the purity and delicacy of the original texture. Those oft-abused words, naïve, naïveté, were more applicable to her in their fullest sense than to any other woman I ever met with. Her conversation was the most untiring I ever enjoyed, because the stores which fed that flowing eloquence were all native and unborrowed: you were not borne along by it as by a torrent—bongré, malgré,—nor dazzled as by an artificial jet d'eau set to play for your amusement. There was the obvious wish to please—a little natural coquetterie—vivacity without effort, sentiment without affectation, exceeding mobility, which yet never looked like caprice; and the most consummate refinement of thought, and feeling, and expression. From that really elegant and highly-toned mind, nothing flippant nor harsh could ever proceed; slander died away in her presence; what was evil she would not hear of; what was malicious she would not understand; what was ridiculous she would not see. Sometimes there was a wild, artless fervour in her impulses and feelings, which might have become a feather-cinctured Indian on her savannah; then, the next moment, her bearing reminded you of the court-bred lady of the bed-chamber. Quick in perception, yet femininely confiding, uniting a sort of restless vivacity with an indolent gracefulness, she appeared to me by far the most poetical and genuine being of my own sex I ever knew in highly-cultivated life: one to whom no wrong could teach mistrust; no injury, bitterness; one to whom the common-place realities, the vulgar necessary cares of existence, were but too indifferent;—who was, in reality, all that other women try to appear, and betrayed, with a careless independence, what they most wish to conceal. I draw from the life,—now, what would you say to such a woman if you met with her in the world?
MEDON.
I should say—she had no business there.
ALDA.
How?
MEDON.
I repeat that the woman you have just portrayed is hardly fit for the world.
ALDA.
Say rather, the world is not fitted for her. As the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the world was made for man, not man for the world—still less woman.