And so farewell to Berlin and off to Hamburg, where there was rumor of a newly to be founded national theater. This enterprise came to nothing and Lessing in his despair accepted the office of librarian to the hereditary grand duke of Brunswick. The town of Wolfenbüttel which then became his home was not exactly a metropolis, but the grand-ducal library was one of the finest in all Germany. It contained more than ten thousand manuscripts and several of these were of prime importance in the history of the Reformation. Boredom of course is the main incentive to scandal mongering and gossip. In Wolfenbüttel a former art critic, columnist and dramatic essayist was by this very fact a highly suspicious person and soon Lessing was once more in trouble. Not because of anything he had done but on account of something he was vaguely supposed to have done, to wit: the publication of a series of articles attacking the orthodox opinions of the old school of Lutheran theology. These sermons (for sermons they were) had actually been written by a former Hamburg minister, but the grand duke of Brunswick, panic stricken at the prospect of a religious war within his domains, ordered his librarian to be discreet and keep away from all controversies. Lessing complied with the wishes of his employer. Nothing, however, had been said about treating the subject dramatically and so he set to work to re-valuate his opinions in terms of the stage. The play which was born out of this small-town rumpus was called “Nathan the Wise.” The theme was very old and I have mentioned it before in this book. Lovers of literary antiquities can find it (if Mr. Sumner will allow them) in Boccaccio’s “Decameron” where it is called the “Sad Story of the Three Rings” and where it is told as follows: