But through the wind,
grown to tempest, beyond the sound of the violent thunder--louder
than any possible thunder--nearer and nearer comes the storm of the
victorious army, like some disturbance of the earth itself, as they
flee into the tumult, out of the intolerable confinement and
suspense, dead-set upon them.
The Enlightening, the Aufklarung, according to the aspiration of Duke
Carl, was effected by other hands; Lessing and Herder, brilliant
precursors of the age of genius which centered in Goethe, coming well
within the natural limits of Carl's lifetime. As precursors Goethe
gratefully recognised them, and understood that there had been a
thousand others, looking forward to a new era in German literature
with the desire which is in some sort a "forecast of capacity,"
awakening each other to the permanent reality of a poetic ideal in
human life, slowly forming that public consciousness to which Goethe
actually addressed himself. It is their aspirations I have tried to
embody in the portrait of Carl.
A hard winter had covered the Main with a firm footing of ice. The
liveliest social intercourse was quickened thereon. I was unfailing
from early morning onwards; and, being lightly clad, found myself,
when my mother drove up later [153] to look on, fairly frozen. My
mother sat in the carriage, quite stately in her furred cloak of red
velvet, fastened on the breast with thick gold cord and tassels.
"Dear mother," I said, on the spur of the moment, "give me your furs,
I am frozen.
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