"Now you look like the Thunderer, like Jupiter," said the duke, regarding him lovingly. "You have returned handsomer and sublimer than when you departed, and I can readily comprehend that all the goddesses and nymphs of Italy have endeavored to retain in their happy land the heavenly being in whom the sublimity of Jove and the beauty of Apollo are united." "Duke!" cried Goethe, furiously, "I conjure you, speak seriously! Do not annihilate me with your ridicule!" "Well, then, we will be serious," said Charles August, tenderly. "Come here, Wolf, and seat yourself at my side on this little sofa, where we have so often sat together in brotherly love. Thus it shall be to-day again. I see, to my joy, Wolf, that you are unchanged, and your quick temper and fierce anger against yourself are therefore refreshing to your old friend. Now let us see what can be done; but this I tell you in advance--you must overcome your longing to return to Italy, you must remain here, for only in tranquillity and peace can you attain the high ends of your existence, and climb to the summit of which you were speaking. Of this you were convinced yourself, and on this account you left Italy and returned home. Therefore be true to yourself, you dear, great fellow, and journey on toward your high aim with undaunted heart and steadfast gaze! Accomplish your sublime mission as poet, and I will endeavor to procure you the leisure and honorable retirement essential to your poetic labors." "My duke and master, you are indeed my savior!" cried Goethe; "you have spoken what I scarcely dared utter! Yes, that is it! Leisure and retirement I must have. My official sprang wholly from my personal relations to your highness. Let our old ones be modified--let a new relation hereafter exist between us. Let me fill the whole measure of my existence at your side, so that my strength may be concentrated and made available, like a newly-opened, collected, and purified spring situated on an eminence, from which your will can readily cause its waters to flow in any direction! Continue to care for me as you have heretofore done; thus you will do more for me than I could accomplish for myself, more than I can desire or demand. Yes, I hope that I will become more to you than I have hitherto been, if you will only command me to do that which no one can do but myself, and commission others to do the rest. I can only say: 'Master, here am I, do with me as you will.'"[44]