[Footnote 124: According to Böttiger, whose statements are not always trustworthy in matters of detail, Schiller said to him in November, 1801, that he had at one time planned three different plays on the subject of the Maid of Orleans, and that he would have executed all three if he had had time. One of these was to have been a historical tragedy, with Johanna dying at the stake in Rouen.--This can hardly mean anything more than that Schiller was in doubt for a while as to the best treatment of his theme. The idea of his actually making three different plays on the same subject is quite too preposterous. His promise, in a letter of March 1, 1802, that _if_ he should write a second 'Maid of Orleans', Göschen should publish it, is only an author's playful 'jollying' of a friendly publisher. The passage from Böttiger is quoted at length by Boxberger in his Introduction to 'The Maid of Orleans' (Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur, Vol. CXXII, second part, page 211).] [Footnote 125: Lewis E. Gates, "Studies and Appreciations."] [Footnote 126: Compare Morley's "Voltaire", Chapter III.] CHAPTER XIX The Bride of Messina Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht, Der Übel grösztes aber ist die Schuld. _'The Bride of Messina'_. After the completion of 'The Maid of Orleans', in the spring of 1801, Schiller found himself once more the unhappy victim of leisure. A new task was needed to make life tolerable, but what should it be? 'At my time of life', he remarked in a letter to Körner, 'the choice of a subject is far more difficult; the levity of mind which enables one to decide so quickly in one's youth is no longer there, and the love, without which there can be no poetic creation, is harder to arouse.' Ere long, having a mind to try his hand upon a tragedy in 'the strictest Greek form', he was musing upon that which in time came to be known as 'The Bride of Messina'.