flow into my being to strengthen me, to make the waves of poetry surge higher, and fill the air with music that shall resound throughout the world, and find an echo in heaven and in hell!" "Oh, Wolf!" cried the duke, now that Goethe had paused for a moment, "how happy I am to have you once more in our midst! It is as though the sun had returned, and I had just stepped out of a dark cellar into the fresh, free air, and were walking hand in hand with a friend toward a glittering temple that had been closed to me during his absence. Wolf, I was becoming a very prosaic and stupid fellow, and had almost begun to consider the dark cellar in which I was sojourning an agreeable dwelling. I thank God that you have come to relieve me from this curse! Speak on, my friend; your words are as sweet music that I have not heard for a long time." "I must speak on, my duke; I must unburden my heart completely, for who knows whether it will often open itself again, and lay aside the covering in which I enveloped the poor thing when I took leave of bright, sunny Italy? But I must admit that, since I crossed the borders of Germany, I have been twenty times on the point of retracing my footsteps, in defiance of reason and conviction--on the point of giving up every thing, and deciding rather to live in Italy as a happy, worthless dilettante, than to dwell in Germany as a high official and celebrated poet. I am angry with myself, but I must nevertheless make the admission. I feel that I have been disenchanted since my return to Germany: I now view, with sobered sight, many things that memory painted in glowing colors, and the result is that I am by no means pleased. I long to return to Italy; and yet, in my inmost soul, I feel that I must remain here, in order to become that for which Fate has destined me. I feel like crying, as a bad boy over his broken playthings, and I could box my own ears for entertaining such a desire. I now conjure you, my duke and friend, stand at my side and help me to allay the fury of the storm that is raging in my inmost being. See, what an infamous irony this is on my being! I have happily passed the stormy period of my poetic labors, and have freed myself from the bombast of sentimentality. I despise all this from the bottom of my heart, and am at times so angry with myself about that sentimental fellow, 'Werther,' that I would gladly disown him. Now a new storm is raging within me in its former fury, and my heart longs for Italy as for a lost paradise. So help me, duke; help me to become a sensible man once more!" Goethe stamped furiously on the floor as he uttered these words, and his eyes sparkled with anger.