On his return, after an absence of four months, he wrote in hexameters, as a satire on the political follies of the day, his admirable version of the old Low Dutch tale, “Reineke Fuchs.” Next year, 1793, he was again with the Duke, this time before Mainz, which the Prussians were trying to recapture from the French. When the town was given up, Goethe felt that he had had enough, and more than enough, of war, and went back with relief to his home and his studies at Weimar. CHAPTER VIII. During the next period of Goethe’s life, extending from 1794 to 1805--that is, from his forty-fifth to his fifty-sixth year--the central facts are those relating to his friendship with Schiller. Schiller, who was ten years younger than Goethe, came to Weimar from Dresden in 1787, when Goethe was in Italy. He was then twenty-eight years of age, and was known chiefly as the author of “The Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” He had passed through many a harsh and stern experience, but retained in all their freshness the high, ideal impulses of his early youth. Of the many striking figures who arose in Germany during the second half of the eighteenth century, Schiller, not as a writer only but as a man, was one of the noblest. It was his destiny to have to endure much physical pain, but his sufferings were never allowed to embitter his spirit or to depress his courage. He marched steadily forward on his chosen path, keeping always before himself the loftiest aims, and kindling in other minds something of his own generous passion for truth, humanity, and freedom. Dramatic work having been anything but profitable in a material sense, Schiller began, soon after his arrival at Weimar, to write his book on the revolt of the Netherlands, hoping that as an historian he might secure the independence that was necessary to enable him to do justice to his powers as a poet. He had the warmest admiration for Goethe’s genius, and looked forward eagerly to his return. The two poets met for the first time in the summer of 1788, at Rudolstadt, in the house of Frau von Lengefeld, whose daughter Charlotte afterwards became Schiller’s wife. Goethe, who had no means of knowing that Schiller’s ideas had been in some respects gradually approaching his own, thought of him simply as one of the vehement “Sturm und Drang” writers. On this occasion, therefore, their talk did not pass beyond the limits of ordinary politeness, and Schiller obtained the impression that they were so different from one another that friendship between them would be impossible. Nevertheless, he thought much about Goethe, and sometimes could not help rather enviously contrasting Goethe’s prosperity with his own crushing difficulties.