IN THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one observed us,
he would have had something to tell to posterity. Goethe's peculiarities
were exhibited to the full: first he would growl at me, then to make it
all up again he would caress me, with the most flattering words. His
bottle of wine he kept in the adjoining room, because I had reproached
him for his drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he
disappeared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a glass.
I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him that twelve
glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had had only six. "How do
you know that so positively?" he said. "I heard the gurgle of the bottle
in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you have betrayed
yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his
beloved, by your breath." "You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now take
yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out. But I sprang
in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of the room. "Now I shall
see if I can shut you in, and whether you are a good spirit or an evil
one, like the rat in Faust; I kiss this threshold and bless it, for over
it daily passes the most glorious human spirit and my best friend."
"Over you and your love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too
dear to me; and around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced
around the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
is better to keep on good terms with you." And so he dismissed me with
tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark before his door, to
gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that this door, which I had closed
with my own hand, had separated me from him in all probability forever.
Whoever comes near him must confess that his genius has partly passed
into goodness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting
into a soft purple light.