The Erfurt interview left another hidden sore. It was there that the divorce from Josephine was officially discussed, with a view to a more ambitious alliance. Persistent as the rumours of a divorce had been for seven years past, they seem to have emanated, not from the husband, but from jealous sisters-in-law, intriguing relatives, and officious Ministers. To the most meddlesome of these satellites, Fouché, who had ventured to suggest to Josephine the propriety of sacrificing herself for the good of the State, Napoleon had lately administered a severe rebuke. But now he caused Talleyrand and Caulaincourt to sound the Czar as to the feasibility of an alliance with one of his sisters. The response was equally vague and discreet. Alexander expressed his gratification at the friendship which proffered such a request and his desire for the founding of a Napoleonic House. Further than this he did not go: and eight days after his return to St. Petersburg his only marriageable sister, Catherine, was affianced to the heir to the Duchy of Oldenburg. This event, it is true, was decided by the Dowager Empress; but no one, least of all Napoleon, could harbour any doubts as to its significance. In truth, Napoleon's chief triumphs at Erfurt were social and literary. His efforts to dazzle German princes and denationalize two of her leading thinkers were partly successful. Goethe and Wieland bowed before his greatness. To the former Napoleon granted a lengthy interview. He flattered the aged poet at the outset by the words, "You are a man": he then talked about several works in a way that Goethe thought very just; and he criticised one passage of the poet's youthful work, "Werther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe agreed. On Voltaire's "Mahomet" he heaped censure, for its unworthy portraiture of the conqueror of the East and its ineffective fatalism. "These pieces belong to an obscure age. Besides, what do they mean with their fatalism? Politics is fatalism." The significance of this saying was soon to be emphasized, so that misapprehension was impossible. After witnessing Voltaire's "La Mort de César," Napoleon suggested that the poet ought to write a tragedy in a grander style than Voltaire's, so as to show how the world would have benefited if the great Roman had had time to carry out his vast plans.