was cooking green peas and beef in the kitchen of an inn; that was the banquet of the suitors in the kitchen of Penelope. Men do not change; heroes are not marble. Their skin is hairy and furrowed, their hands are swollen and mobile. Within the hands of the Olympians, we, like the godlike Ulysses, drift at sea, hung in a little skiff above the gulf. How fearful that thought, yet how sweet, when you lie on your back amid the caressing grass, and search heaven with your eyes!

Soon it became the great delight of the Kronprinz Table Round to hear Doctor Goethe tell the day's discoveries. There might be a verse of Pindar, or the laborious sketch of a country church, or the beautiful lindens of a village square, or some children, or a pretty farm-girl. He had the gift of charging his stories with an almost childlike excitement which made the smallest detail interesting. As soon as he entered, the pace of Life seemed to grow fast. Conversation so wild and so impetuous would be unbearable from anyone else, but how could they resist this torrent or withstand this whirlwind? Ah, Goethe,' one of the young men told him, 'one is forced to love you.' Before long all Wetzlar wished to know him.

Two of the secretaries, bachelors, dwelt at the outer borders of the Table Round. One, a youth of great beauty, whose eyes were blue, and soft, and sad, bore the name of Jerusalem. He kept himself aloof, they said, because of an unlucky love for the wife of one of his colleagues. Once or twice he called on Goethe, who was interested in his pessimism. But Jerusalem was so very reserved as to prevent any lasting friendship.

The other hermit was Kestner, from the embassy of Hanover. When his friends spoke of him, they always called him "The Fiancé.' In fact, he

passed as being engaged to one of the girls in town. He was extremely serious: his chief thought well of him, and, in spite of his youth, left him large responsibility. So he could not often come to dine at the Kronprinz. At first, because the wits of the diplomatic circle lauded the newcomer, Kestner mistrusted Goethe. But on a day when he happened to be walking through the country with a friend, they found Goethe under a tree. At once the conversation became profound, and after two or three meetings even Kestner owned that he had met a genius.

Admired by his comrades, free of temporal or scholastic care, enraptured by the beauty of the spring, Goethe was happy. As a shiver skims a quiet lake, sometimes a fleeting trouble touched his delight. Frederica? No, it was not the memory of her that passed over the quiet warmth of his thought. It was, again, an expectation, an anxiety. He gazed at Wetzlar from the hills, as once, from the Cathedral, he had gazed at Alsace. 'Will it come to me to tremble one day when I open a door? Shall I ever forget the verses I read in the vision of a distant face? Under the moonlight, when I say farewell, will absence ever seem too long, or dawn too far away? Yes, all that will come, I know. . . . And yet ... Frederica.'

He noted down something he remembered: 'In the days when I was little, I chanced to plant a cherry tree. I loved to watch it grow. Then the spring frost killed its buds. I had to wait for another year before I could see ripe cherries on my tree. Next the birds ate them, then a greedy neighbor. And yet, if ever I have another garden, I shall plant a cherry tree again.'

That is how Doctor Goethe roamed beneath the buds, afire with his new love. He knew all about it, except the lady's name.

III

In the fine weather the young people at the legations would organize barn dances. Some came on horseback, others drove the damsels of Wetzlar to the village inn where they were to meet. The first time Goethe was invited to one of these festivities it was agreed that he and two girls should stop for Fräulein Charlotte Buff, whom they all called Lotte. She was the daughter of old Herr Buff, officer of the Teutonic Order. She lived in the pleasant white cottage where the Order had its headquarters.

Goethe got out of the carriage, passed under the stone doorway, and crossed an almost baronial courtyard. Since no one was about, he went into the house.

A young girl was standing among a group of children. She was giving them tarts. She was blue-eyed and blonde, but her features were not regular. A strict judge might hardly have found her pretty. But all his life a man pursues among the race of women the type which, however mysterious the reason, alone can move him. What struck Goethe was a rustic grace, a sort of intimate and domestic lightness. From Strassburg, Frederica had already proved a bucolic muse. Now Nausicaa, laundress and princess, might likewise continue that virginal prolific lineage.

What Charlotte said on the way out, her response to the presence of Nature, her childlike pleasure at the dance, and the competence with which, during a storm, she calmed her companions by little games, completed her conquest of the Doctor. To his delight he recognized that he had just found the woman he had loved for a fortnight. Lotte, too, saw that she had pleased him, and was happy. For a month her friends had spoken of no one but this magnificent Intelligence. She was the

flirt an honest woman alone can be a dangerous flirt.

Later on in the evening Kestner, who, as usual, had been delayed by his work, - for he was meticulous, copying every letter and never letting the Hanover post go without reading over and signing his dispatch, - rode out to join his friends. By his attitude and the girl's, Goethe understood that Lotte Buff was the famous fiancée. The discovery took him aback, but he mastered himself and continued to dance and to amuse himself and the others.

The dance lasted till sunrise. Goethe brought his three companions back in silence, across misty woods and fields refreshed from the storm. The others slept, but Charlotte and he sat erect. 'But please,' she begged, 'don't put yourself out for me.'

He looked at her. 'While I see your eyes open,' he answered, 'I can never close my own.'

After this they did not speak. When Goethe moved, he would brush the girl's warm knees, and the slight contact was one of the greatest pleasures he had ever known. The beauty of the dawn, their astounding happiness, and the somewhat absurd slumbers of the others made them feel like confederates in some delightful plot.

'Unquestionably,' thought Goethe, 'I love her. But how is that possible? Even now, at Sesenheim What of that? One love withers, another blooms, and it is Nature's course. But if she is Kestner's fiancée, what hope have I? Do I even need hope? Seeing her, watching her move among the children, speaking to her, hearing her laughthat would be enough. What will come of it all? Who can say? And why try to foresee the end of anything? One must live like a running brook.'

Finally, when the carriage stopped before the Order's headquarters, he was bewitched.

IV

The next day he called on Nausicaa and made the acquaintance of Alcinous. Old Herr Buff had lost his wife a year before, but he had eleven children, over whom Lotte exercised a benevolent tyranny. As might have been expected, Goethe won the hearts of the patriarch and his children at this very first visit. He told stories, he invented new games. In all that he said or did there was something boyish and persuasive which captivated them.

When he left, all the little clan begged him to come back soon. A smile from Lotte confirmed the invitation. Goethe returned the next day. He had no office to keep him away. There was no greater joy than the presence of Lotte and he was not the man to refuse pleasure when he could take it. They saw him morning and evening. In a few days he became a permanent guest at the house.

Charlotte's life did make a spectacle worth watching. Goethe found in her just what he had so liked in Frederica: an energy practical because of its purpose and poetic because of a sort of easy lightness in all that she did. She worked from morning till night. She washed the small ones, she dressed them, she taught them games, at the same time that she directed, ably and modestly, the studies of the older ones. She took Goethe into the orchard to pick fruit; she set him to work shelling peas and stringing beans. At sunset all the family met in the living-room, where, at Charlotte's command, for she never left her friends uselessly idle, - Goethe tuned the harpsichord.

Lotte was not sentimental. She was sensitive, but was too busy to have either time or desire to toy with sentiment. Her talks with Goethe were instructive and serious. He spoke of his life, of his religious beliefs; sometimes, too, of

Homer or Shakespeare. She was wise enough to see the merit of the companion who had attached himself to her daily life. In all that he said she sensed emotion and even love. That pleased her, but did not disturb. She knew that her own heart was fixed.

As for The Fiancé, he was a little sad. His devotion to diplomacy kept him away almost all day long. When he did reach Lotte's house, there was Goethe sitting at her feet and holding a skein of wool. Or else he would find them in a corner of the garden, choosing flowers for a bouquet. They picked on energetically and included him in their conversation. Nor did his arrival even produce the silence of guilt. Nevertheless, Kestner divined that Goethe was not overhappy to see him. He would rather have stayed alone with Charlotte, but Goethe, fortified by a standing invitation, was in no hurry to go. Since they were philosophers and friends, they hid this deplorable feeling, but each of them was on his guard.

Kestner was the more dismayed because he was modest. He admired his rival greatly. He considered him handsome and witty. What was worse, Goethe had leisure, and it is a great advantage in the eyes of those eternal hermits of the home to be always at hand to save them from restlessness and fret.

The Fiancé would have been assured if he could have read the secret thought of his rival. Ever since his first visit he had known he would never be loved. A woman like Lotte does not sacrifice a Kestner to a Goethe. He could count on amusing them; that was a good deal. What else could he have asked? To marry her? That, to be sure, would make happiness certain. But it was a happiness he did not envy. No, he was satisfied as he was. In sitting at Charlotte's feet, in seeing her play with her young brothers, in

expecting her smile when he had done a favor or turned a phrase, in getting a little tap, light as a caress, when he had ventured too bold a compliment - in all the ordered, the limited life, he found a joy that had no limit.

The spring was warm. Everyone lived in his garden. In Goethe's diary all the incidents of this calm and pure love appeared as little scenes from an idyll. He was building up. Not the masterpiece, perhaps, not the cathedral, but charming little Greek temples, strewn on a lovely landscape. What would come of it all? He had rather not think. More and more he accepted his own conduct as a natural phenomenon.

The evenings became even milder. When Kestner came the three friends would sit on the terrace and talk late into the night. Sometimes they walked under the moonlight through the orchards. They had attained that quality of perfect trust which gives such charm to conversation. No subject seemed trifling. They had for each other that affection, that mutual regard, which alone excuses naïveté.

Goethe talked most. Kestner and Lotte basked in the brilliance of his wit. He described his friends at Frankfort, Fräulein Von Klettenberg and Doctor Merck, a strange man, of evil eye and oily tongue, who delved for formulæ in the books of the mystics. He told how they had read the alchemists together and peopled the universe with sylphs, and water nymphs, and salamanders. A long time ago he had admired the Pietists. They had seemed less bound to vain rituals, more eager than others for a real and intimate faith. Then he had tired of them. "They are people of mediocre intelligence who imagine nothing but religion exists because they are ignorant of the rest of life. They are intolerant; they wish to make other people's noses like their own.’

Goethe himself held there was no truth in the theory of an external God: 'Believe that God is always beside you? That would embarrass me. I should feel as if the Great Elector were always there. I believe that God is inside me.'

Next to love, religion is the favorite topic of women. Lotte followed these conversations with a lively interest.

Often, after having left their friend at her house, Goethe and Kestner roamed on through the empty streets of Wetzlar. The moon threw down its hard shadows. Toward two in the morning Goethe, sitting on a wall, would declaim the most insane of verse. Sometimes they heard footsteps, and a moment after caught sight of Jerusalem. Slowly, alone, his head bent, he tramped along.

"Ah!' said Goethe. "The Lover!'
And he burst out laughing.

V

Spring gave place to summer and tenderness to passion. Lotte was too lovable, Goethe was too young. As they trod the narrow alleys of the garden, sometimes, for a moment, their bodies touched. Sometimes, as they unwound a skein or picked a bud, their hands met. The memory of such moments kept Goethe awake through long nights. He could hardly wait for the morning, which would lead him back to her. In every subtle shade of their sympathy he repeated the tremors he had once suffered from Frederica, and this returning calendar of love dismayed him.

'When love comes back, it destroys its own quality, which is the expression of the Eternal and the Infinite.' Since they too would come back, the life of man was only the comedy of a weary mortality.

When the heavy days of August cut

short their little common tasks and left him for long hours at Charlotte's feet, he grew bolder. One day he stole a kiss. Like an impeccable fiancée, she told Kestner.

The grave and tender secretary was in a hard position. He might have lost all by rebuking Lotte's unconscious flirtation, by misplacing a single word. But Kestner, with the last perfection of a lover, could be tactful. He merely put his trust in Charlotte and left her, as she herself asked, the duty of leading Goethe back to the paths of propriety. That evening she begged the Doctor to stay after Kestner and warned him not to mistake her sentiments. She still loved her betrothed. She would never love another. Kestner, waiting for Goethe, saw him come sadly out, with head hanging, and felt that he was very happy, and very good, and very merciful.

From then on a strange and sweet confederacy united the three friends. Like Goethe, who repeated everything, Kestner and Charlotte began to disclose their feelings with the greatest liberty. Goethe's love for Lotte was the topic of long and delightful chats on the terrace. They spoke of it as a phenomenon of Nature, at once dangerous and exciting. Goethe's birthday was the same as Kestner's. They exchanged presents. Kestner gave Goethe a little pocket Homer; Lotte gave him the pink ribbon she had worn at her bosom the day they met.

Kestner had considered sacrificing himself. He did not mention his scruples to the others, but noted them in his diary. Goethe was younger and more handsome and more brilliant than he. Perhaps he could make Lotte happier. But Lotte herself had sworn that she preferred him and had felt that Goethe, with all his spectacular charms, was hardly made to be a husband. And doubtless Kestner would

not have dared, for he was deep in love.

Behind his gay and carefree air, Goethe suffered. His conceit smarted at her clear and immutable choice. Under the long temptation of their common life, his desire awoke. In moments of violent passion, even before the indulgent Kestner, he would seize Charlotte's hands and cover them with kisses and tears.

But in the darkest moments of despair he knew that under this zone of heartfelt sorrow slumbered deep layers of calm where one day he might take refuge. As a man beaten by storms still knows that the sun is bright above the clouds and still reserves the coming of its ray, Goethe in his torment foresaw that soon he would conquer his woe, and even, in recalling it, would thrill to some bitter and sombre joy.

VI

The evenings became shorter and cooler. The rose of September fell. Goethe's satanic friend, the brilliant Merck, came to Wetzlar. He met Charlotte and found her charming. But he did not tell Goethe so. With a shrug of indifference, he counseled flight to other loves. The Doctor, a little nettled, agreed that the time had come to tear himself from a fruitless and waning passion. To the man it was still delightful to live in Charlotte's shadow, to feel the rustle of her dress at night, to win from her tiny proofs of affection stolen under the silent vigilance of Kestner, but the artist was sated with his redundant emotion. He had drawn spiritual riches from his sojourn; he had collected some lovely landscapes full of sentiment, but the lode was exhausted, the harvest reaped, and he must go.

'Must I depart? I change my mind like the vane on the steeple. The world is so fair! Happy he who can savor it