We can fancy how such an utterance enraged the Romanticists, who at that time were all on the point of going over to Catholicism. Thenceforward there was no more worship of Goethe. Tieck was in Rome, and the report spread that he was about to embrace the Catholic faith, to which his wife and daughter had become converts. Friedrich Schlegel was preparing to take the final step. He was lecturing at Cologne, but making application for a regular appointment in every likely quarter--Cologne, Paris, Würzburg, Munich, &c. "Given really tempting conditions," he wrote in June 1804, "I should have gone even to Moscow or Dorpat. But," he adds, "my preference was for the Rhine district." Was this because it was a Catholic district? Not at all. "The salmon here is unequalled, so are the crayfish, not to speak of the wine." It was Metternich's pecuniary offer which finally induced him to take the decisive step and join the Church of Rome. He was furious at the essay on Winckelmann, though he expressed unbounded contempt for it. What is most amusing of all, however, is to see how this little work fell like a bomb among the genuine political reactionaries in Vienna. Gentz was already approaching the stage which he had reached when he wrote to Rahel (in 1814) that he had become terribly old and bad (unendlich alt und schlecht), describing his condition thus: "I must give you an idea of the form which my cynicism and egotism have taken. As soon as I can throw down my pen, all my thoughts and time are given to the arrangement of my rooms; I am constantly planning how to procure more money for furniture, perfumes, and every refinement of so-called luxury. My appetite, alas! is gone. Breakfast is the only meal I take any interest in." In 1805 Gentz writes to his worthy friend, Adam Müller: "What struck me most in your letter was your criticism of Goethe's two latest productions. I know them both, but should never have dared to write as you do; though I will not deny that my opinion of them is the same as yours, only still less favourable. The notes on _Rameau_ are simply prosy and commonplace. To write such twaddle nowadays about Voltaire and D'Alembert is really inexcusable in a Goethe. The essays on Winckelmann are atheistic. I should never have credited Goethe with such a bitter and perfidious hatred of Christianity, though I have long suspected him of culpability in this matter. What indecent, cynical, faun-like joy he seems to have felt on making the grand discovery that it was really because Winckelmann was a "born pagan" that the different forms of the Christian religion were a matter of such indifference to him! No! even Goethe will not easily rise again in my estimation after these two books!"[4] Goethe's essay, we observe, had gone straight to the mark; the Romanticists felt as if they had received a slap in the face, when he declared himself hostile to their theory of art.