The opening lines of the second book will serve as well as any others to illustrate Schiller's method as a translator: Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant. Inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto: 'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem, Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum Eruerint Danai; quaeque ipse miserrima vidi Et quorum pars magna fui.' Schiller's version runs thus: Der ganze Saal war Ohr, jedweder Mund verschlossen, Und Fürst Aeneas, hingegossen Auf hohem Polstersitz, begann: Dein Wille, Königin, macht Wunden wieder bluten, Die keine Sprache schildern kann: Wie Trojas Stadt verging in Feuerfluten, Den Jammer willst du wissen, die Gefahr, Wovon ich Zeuge, ach, und meistens Opfer war. As for the 'Fredericiad', it never got beyond the status of a plan. By November, 1791, Schiller had concluded that Gustav Adolf would be a better subject for an epic,--he could get up no enthusiasm for Unser Fritz and shrank from the 'gigantic labor of idealizing him'. Soon after this he seems to have dropped altogether the idea of writing an epic. In the spring of 1791, when he had grown strong enough to think of attacking the second installment of the 'Thirty Years' War', Schiller took up his abode in Rudolstadt; and there, in May, he was prostrated by a second illness which was worse than the first. His life was despaired of, he bade his friends farewell and the report went out from Jena that he was dead. After the crisis was past came weary weeks of lassitude and pain, with no possibility of writing or reading. In July he took the waters at Karlsbad, with some slight benefit. By autumn he was well enough to do the promised continuation of his history and to lay plans with Göschen for a _New Thalia_ to begin with the next year. But he was now in desperate straits for money. His illness had been very costly and the cessation of work had brought a cessation of income. He was in debt to various friends, and the Duke of Weimar was too poor to help him. Saddest of all, his beloved wife's health was broken with anxiety and watching. 'It is a joy to me', he wrote to Körner in October, 'even when I am busy, to think that she is near me. Her dear life and influence round about me, the childlike purity of her soul and the warmth of her love, give me a repose and serenity that would otherwise be impossible in my hypochondriac condition. If we were only well we should need nothing else to live like the gods.' It was a dark juncture, darker far than that of 1784, and now as then help came unexpectedly from afar. It came this time from Denmark.