Like most people whose minds are affected, Stieglitz had periods of violent excitement, after which he relapsed into his ordinary state of silent, almost animal-like brooding. Once when they were on a walking tour, he was so lost in his own thoughts, so indifferent to all else, that she left him and went off by herself, hoping that this would rouse him; but he did not even notice it. It was a kind of warning that her _final_ desertion of him would be of no avail; but it was a warning that she did not understand. Entirely possessed by the latest ideas of the day, persuaded that a poet ought to live in the world, to influence and be influenced by it, it was her constant desire to drive him to action. She said to him one day: "I long for your spiritual regeneration. You will be born again! I know you will! Would that I could hasten that birth--even if it were by artificial means! But how if my surgical operation miscarried!" And in December 1834 she writes in her diary that Goethe's life becomes fuller from the moment that Schiller enters into it, but that Goethe ought to have profited more by his friend's death, and would have done so, if he had not, according to his custom, determinedly refused to sorrow; if he had allowed the sorrow to enter into him, to become part of himself, the result would have been a renewal of youth as far as his poetical productivity was concerned. It was in this same month of December, 1834, that Stieglitz's disgust with life reached a sort of climax. His malady took the form of intellectual stagnation, of absolute incapacity to express himself. Charlotte begged him, as if he had been a child, rather to rave and storm as of old than to collapse in this terrible manner; but she begged in vain. It was then that she determined to employ the last means in her power, to take that step which she, with her innocent, high-flown ideas, felt it obligatory to take, in order that a great, simple sorrow might enter into his life, reawaken his genius, and give his poetry new themes. On the evening of the 29th she came home, knowing that she would have two hours to herself, threw her short fur cape and boa on the hall floor, hurried into her bedroom, locked the door of communication with the kitchen, undressed, washed herself, put on a clean night-dress, wrote a few lines to Heinrich expressing her belief that new life for him would arise out of this misfortune, and exhorting him no longer to be weak, but calm and strong and great. Then she lay down on the bed and with a firm hand plunged the dagger of their wedding tour into her heart. * * * * *