Cold--cold prudence and choice--appears first in its embodiment, Jarno, who symbolizes its _secret_ beginnings in Wilhelm. But then and there its beginnings are only symbolized. Soon, however, disappointment bitterer than death, with sickness, remorse, horror, enters and chills him to the core. Ah, and so these clouds of glory are only raw vapor and mist, after all! The rainy season has set in. "Let's into the house," says Prudence; "let's box ourselves up nicely, and get some comfort, since that is the whole of life." No, he will not do that; he will stand out, and be drenched, and realize the full extent of his illusion. Henceforth his one employment shall be to taunt his heart with its own hopes, to put all the summer blossom and beauty of his former imaginations beside this wintry death-in-life, and shame them by the contrast. This period in Wilhelm's life is wrought out in Goethe's picture with extreme power. But he recovers himself, slowly. And Goethe's great knowledge of human nature is shown in this, that Wilhelm does not regain his ennobling imaginations while holding fast to the cool suggestions of prudence. No, he reverts to the former, forsaking the latter. The cold season has passed over him, and seemingly left nothing behind. With health and joy, his illusions, one by one, one and all, return. I find this true. Oscillation between opposite poles,--how long it lasts! A powerful experience comes, and all seems changed in one's being; it passes, and nothing seems changed. "Is there for me," one might cry, "only this aimless see-saw? To-day Don Quixote, to-morrow Sancho, next day Don Quixote again,--is that to go on forever?" Happy is he, provided his poverty be not his exemption, who has never wrung his hands in utter despair of finding centrality, unity, at last,--a centre where the divine passion and afflatus of the heart are reconciled with the hard-eyed perceptions of common-sense. But life is not a mere pendulum. Nature works to her ends. There is oscillation, but also growth. And so, though Wilhelm recurs to his illusions, and even embodies them by going upon the stage, the seeds of discriminating judgment are sown in his heart, and are already germinating.