CHAPTER XI.

ADIEU TO ITALY.

Writhing in agony for three days and three long nights, at length Goethe found relief in the omnipresent balsam, all-healing Nature!

The poet-eagle was healed! The pinions of his soul had recovered from the wounds inflicted by Cupid's envenomed arrow. Six days of solitude, six days of restless wandering, six days of communing with God and Nature, six days of struggling with his own weakness--these six days have made him six years older, taught him to conquer pain, and restored him to joyousness and confidence in himself.

On the morning of the seventh day, Goethe entered the room where his friends were assembled, and greeted them with all his former gayety and cordiality. No change was observable in his countenance, except that he had become a little paler, and that his large brown eyes looked still larger than usual. Only once did an anxious expression flit over his countenance, and that was when he asked Signore Zucchi why his dear friend Angelica had not come down to breakfast with her husband.

"She is not here," replied Zucchi. "She has been in Rome for the past three days."

"In Rome?" repeated Goethe, with astonishment. "We intended making an excursion together through the Albanian Mountains, and now she has left us! When will she return?"

"That the physicians alone can tell you," replied Zucchi.

"Is Signora Angelica ill?" asked Goethe, with alarm.

"Oh, no, not she! But the young girl, the beautiful Leonora, has suddenly fallen ill. Angelica found her lying insensible on the floor of the pavilion. She interested herself in the poor girl, did all she could to cheer and console her, and even attempted to reconcile her to her affianced, from whom she had been estranged. Leonora, however, declared that she would never marry young Matteo--that she would become no man's wife, but would always remain with her brother. At her earnest request, Angelica took her to Rome, to her brother's house. She had hardly arrived there before she was taken violently ill with an attack of fever. She is in a very precarious condition, and Angelica, instead of finishing the large painting for which an Englishman has offered four thousand scudi, has made herself this poor girl's nurse."

Goethe had listened to this narrative in silence, his head bowed down on his breast. When Zucchi ceased speaking, he raised his head, and cast a quick glance around the room. He saw gay and unconcerned countenances only. No one observed him--the story of his anguish was known to none of his friends.

He also seemed to be perfectly quiet and composed--to be occupied solely with his paintings and drawings. When his friends suggested that the time had now arrived to carry out their projected tour through the Albanian Mountains, Goethe declined to accompany them, telling them that an alteration which his friends in Germany desired him to make in his "Egmont," necessitated his speedy return to Rome.

Goethe returned to the city on the evening of the same day, and repaired, immediately on his arrival, to the house of Signore Bandetto, to inquire after his sister's condition. She was still dangerously ill, and the physicians gave but little hope. Signora Angelica was with her, nursing her like a tender mother. He returned to the house for the same purpose later in the evening, and so on each ensuing day. Gradually, the bulletins were more favorable, and he was told that she was steadily improving.

Goethe had been in Rome for two weeks, and had neither written nor painted during this time; he had even avoided the gods of the Belvidere and the holy halls of St. Peter's. The wounds of his heart were not yet quite healed. Leonora's illness still made them smart.

To-day, he had again repaired to Signor Bandetto's house, had seen Angelica Kaufmann, and had been told that all danger was now over. A weight of care was removed from his soul, and he now entered his studio with a gay and unclouded countenance for the first time during his stay in Rome. His studio was a scene of wild confusion; books, papers, drawings, chairs, and tables, were in the greatest disorder. The Juno Ludovisi's head was gray with dust, and the impious chambermaid had thrown the poet's dressing-gown over the figure of Cupid, as though the god of love were a clothes-rack.

Goethe laughed loudly, laughed for the first time in long, long weeks, and relieved the poor god of his disgraceful burden.

He then bowed profoundly, and looked intently into the mischievous god's smiling countenance, as if to defy him to do his worst.

From this hour Goethe was once more himself. All grief had vanished from his heart, and he was again restored to his former peace and gayety. He once more belonged to the gods and muses, to poetry and to nature. But, above all, to poetry! In the hours of his anguish the arts had not been able to rescue and strengthen him, but wondrous thoughts and sublime feelings had taken root in his soul.

Pain was overcome, as was also love. When he saw Leonora, after her recovery, and when she thanked him, in faltering tones, for his sympathy, and his frequent inquiries during her illness, Goethe smiled, and treated her as a kind father treats his child, or a brother his sister.

She fully understood the meaning of this smile, and shed many bitter tears in her little room in the stillness of the night, but she did not complain. She knew that this short-lived passion had fallen from Goethe, as the withered blossom falls from the laurel-tree, and that she would be nothing more than a remembrance in his life.

This consciousness she wore as a talisman against all sorrow; the roses returned to her cheeks, her eyes once more shone lustrously, and never in her after-life did she forget Goethe, as he never forgot her. The remembrance of this beautiful girl shone as a bright, unclouded star throughout Goethe's entire life; and in the days of his old age, when the heart that had throbbed so ardently in Rome had grown cold, Goethe said and wrote of this fair girl: "Her remembrance has never faded from my thought and soul."

Another painful awakening soon followed this short dream of love--the awakening from the dreamy, enchanting life in Italy, the return to Germany. It was a pain and a joy at the same time. The deep pain of separation from Rome, and the joyful prospect of returning to his home and friends, and, above all, to his friend Charlotte von Stein?

"It was for her sake that I conquered this passion," said Goethe to himself. "I told her that I would return to her, unfettered in hand and heart, and I will keep my promise. Charlotte's love, Charlotte's friendship, shall console me for what I have denied myself here, for what I leave behind me! You, too, will be there, Muses; you will follow me to the fatherland, and assemble lovingly around the poet in the little house in Weimar. A poet I am; that I feel; of that I am now convinced. In the next ten years of work that will at the utmost be vouchsafed me, I will strive to accomplish, by diligent application, as much that is good and great as I achieved without hard study in the days of my youthful vigor and enthusiasm. I will be diligent and joyous! I will live, create, and enjoy, and that I can do as well in Weimar as in Rome! I will bear the Italian heaven within me; I will erect 'Torquato Tasso' as a monument to Italy and myself. Farewell, sublime, divine Roma! A greeting to you, you dear little city, in which the prince lives whom I love, and the friend who belongs to my soul. A greeting to you, Weimar!"