"But I will give no credit to such unworthy insinuations! My love shall not be regarded as a mere mockery. You shall not have the pitiful triumph of tearing me from the girl I love. I declare to you and the whole world, I love her, I love the beautiful, the admired, the courted Marie von Arnim. To her belong my thoughts, my wishes, and my hopes. She is my ideal of beauty, of youth, and of female loveliness. I exult in this love; it will raise me from the dust of earth to the sphere of the eternal and immortal gods!" "My poor friend!" sighed Körner, "like your love, the gods only exist in your poetical fancy. Listen to reason, Schiller!" "Reason!" cried he, stamping the floor, wrathfully. "That means the dry insipidity of every-day life, instead of life's festival, wreathed with flowers. No, I will not listen to reason; for you call it reason to consider it possible that the most divine creature on earth could be a base coquette!" "Now you go too far, Schiller," said Göschen, eagerly, "no one made such grave accusations against the daughter. We only said of the mother that she misused your love for her daughter, and that she would never consent to your union. We said that the beautiful young lady was aware of this, and continued to receive your attentions, although she knew the gentleman selected by her mother as her future husband, and would finally consent to marry him. As friends, we conceived it to be our duty to tell you this, in order that you might no longer be deceived in your noblest impulses, and continue to throw away your love, your confidence, and your money, on unworthy objects." "That is the word," cried Schiller, with mocking laughter, "now you have uttered the right word! My money, or rather _your_ money, you would say! You tremble for your vile dross! You made me advances, and Don Carlos is not yet completed. You now fear that my love might distract my attention, and draw me from my work, and that the two hundred dollars which--" "Frederick Schiller!" cried Körner, interrupting him, while Göschen turned away, his lips trembling, and his eyes filled with tears; "Frederick Schiller, now you are unjust; and that, a friend must not be, even in his deepest grief. Vile dross has nothing to do with this sacrifice of friendship, and it was not for its sake that we undertook the thankless office of making the blind see. You well know that Göschen is a noble and disinterested friend, who rejoiced in being permitted to help the poet of Don Carlos out of his difficulties, but it is, of course, painful to him to see the loving, confiding man, squander what the poet earns."