The truth seems to be that when Schiller wrote 'Cabal and Love', he had not progressed far enough in the knowledge of femininity to be able to draw a perfectly life-like portrait of a girl in Louise's station. She is a creature of the same order as Amalia and Leonora,--a sentimental _Schwärmerin_, very much lacking in character and mother-wit. From the first the expression of her love does not ring perfectly true. We suspect her of phrase-making,--she is quite too ethereal and ecstatic for a plain fiddler's daughter. No trace here of that homely poetic realism,--Gretchen at the wash-tub, or Lotte cutting bread and butter,--with which Goethe knew how to invest _his_ bourgeois maidens. For aught we can learn from her discourse Schiller's Louise might be a princess, brought up on a diet of Klopstock's odes. That a girl, returning from church, should inquire of her parents if her lover has called, is quite in order. That she should then confess that thoughts of him have come between her and her Creator, is pardonable. But what are we to think when she goes on to say to her own parents: This little life of mine, oh that I might breathe it out into a soft caressing zephyr to cool his face! This little flower of youth, were it but a violet, that he might step on it, and it might die modestly beneath his feet! That would be enough for me, my father.... Not that I want him now. I renounce him for this life. But then, mother, then, when the barriers of rank are laid low; when all the hateful wrappings of earthly station fall away from us, and men are only men,--I shall bring nothing with me save my innocence; but, you know, father has so often said that pomp and splendid titles will be cheap when God comes, and that hearts will rise in price. Then I shall be rich. Then tears will be counted for triumphs, and beautiful thoughts instead of ancestry. I shall be aristocratic then, mother. What advantage will he have then over his sweetheart? What can one think, indeed, except that this supernal maiden has been reading Klopstock's famous 'Ode to Fanny'?[55]