In the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his letters became friendship and familiarity. "Farewell, sweet friend and beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." In another letter he said that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found everything in her. And just as spiritual love approached more and more the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on a single woman, on Christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. But it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling remained unchanged. There was no woman in Goethe's life in regard to whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in a higher intuition. Even before his friendship with Frau von Stein, at the time of his engagement to Lili Schoenemann, Goethe experienced a spiritual love for a girl he had never seen. He calls Countess Auguste Stolberg "his angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "I have an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no other being on earth could do it." These letters also contain the significant passage: "Miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." And touching the love of his youth, Lotte, Goethe wrote to Kestner: "I really had no idea that all that was in her, for I always loved her far too much to observe her." The Princess in "Tasso" and "Iphigenia" who delivers Orestes from unrest and insanity, are modelled on Charlotte. Tasso is unmistakably a fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which Leonore is fully aware: Now he exalts her to the starry heavens, In radiant glory, and before that form Bows down like angels in the realms above. Then, stealing after her, through silent fields, He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower. He loves not us--forgive me what I say-- His lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings And does invest it with the name we bear. He has relinquished passion's fickle sway, He clings no longer with delusion sweet To outward form and beauty to atone For brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4] And Tasso says: My very knees Trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength Was all required to hold myself erect, And curb the strong desire to throw myself Prostrate before her. Scarcely could I quell The giddy rapture. The significant avowal addressed by Dante to Beatrice: "Into a free man thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was repeated by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte, and is again repeated in Tasso: Over my spirit's depths there comes a change; Relieved from dark perplexity I feel, Free as a god, and all I owe to you.