who, mortally wounded, comes out into the garden of the prison to breathe his last.

Götz. Almighty God! How sweet it is to be under thy heaven! How free! The trees put forth their buds; all the world hopes. Farewell, my children! my buds are crushed, my hope is in my grave!

Elizabeth. Shall I not send Lerse to the cloister for thy son, that thou mayest see and bless him?

Götz. Leave him where he is: he needs not my blessing he is holier than I. Upon our wedding, Elizabeth, could I have thought I should die thus!... Lerse, thy countenance cheers me in the hour of death. As in our most noble fights my spirit encouraged yours; now yours supports mine. Oh, that I could but see George once more, to warm myself in his look! You look down and weep... is he dead? George is dead! Then die, Götz! thou hast outlived thyself outlived the noblest!... How died he? Alas! they took him at Millenberg, and he is executed.

Elizabeth. No, he was slain there! He defended his freedom like a lion.

...

Götz. God be praised! He was the kindest, bravest youth under the sun. Now dismiss my soul. . . . My poor wife! I leave thee in a wretched world. Lerse, forsake her not. Lock your hearts carefully as your doors. The age of frankness and freedom is past; that of treachery begins. The worthless will gain the upperhand by cunning, and the noble will fall into their nets. Maria, God restore thy husband to thee; may he never fall the deeper for having risen so high! Selbitz is dead... and the good Kaiser . . . and my George. . . . Give me some water.... Heavenly sky!... Freedom! freedom! (Dies.)

Elizabeth. Only above above with thee!... The world is a prison.

Maria. Gallant and gentle! Woe to this age that has lost thee!

Lerse. And woe to the future that misprises thee!

CHAPTER III.

WETZLAR.

In the spring of 1772 he arrived at Wetzlar, with Götz in his portfolio, and in his head many wild, unruly thoughts. A passage in the Autobiography amusingly illustrates his conception of the task he had undertaken in choosing to inform the world of his early history. Remember that at Wetzlar he fell in love with Charlotte, and lived through the experience which was fused into Werther, and you will smile as you hear him say: 'What occurred to me at Wetzlar is of no great importance, but it may receive a higher interest if the reader will allow me to give a cursory glance at the history of the Imperial Chamber, in order to present to his mind the unfavorable moment at which I arrived.' write autobiography when one has outlived almost the memories of youth, and entirely lost sympathy with its agitations. At the time he was in Wetzlar he would have looked strangely on any one who ventured to tell him that the history of the Imperial Chamber was worth a smile from Charlotte; but at the time of writing his meagre account of Wetzlar he had some difficulty in remembering what Charlotte's smiles were like. The biographer has a

This it is to

difficult task to make any coherent story out of this episode.*

In Wetzlar there were two buildings interesting above all others to us the Imperial Court of Justice and the Teutsche Haus. The Imperial Court was a Court of Appeal for the whole empire, a sort of German Chancery. Imagine a German Chancery! In no country known to us does Chancery move with railway speed, and in Germany even the railways are slow. Such a chaotic accumulation of business as this Wetzlar Kammer-Gericht presented was perhaps never seen before. Twenty thousand cases lay undecided on Goethe's arrival, and there were but seventeen lawyers to dispose of them. About sixty was the utmost they could get through in a year, and every year brought more than double that number to swell the heap. Some cases had lingered through a century and a half, and still remained far from a decision. This was not a place to impress the sincere and eminently practical mind of Goethe with a high idea of Jurisprudence.

Das teutsche Haus was one of the remnants of the ancient institution of the Teutsche Ritter, or Teutonic Order of Knighthood, celebrated in German mediæval history, where the student is familiar with the black armor and white mantles of these warrior-priests, who fought with the zeal of missionaries and the terrible valor of knights, conquering for themselves a large territory, and still

*

Fortunately, during the very months in which I was rewriting this work, there appeared an invaluable record in the shape of the correspondence between Goethe and Kestner, so often alluded to by literary historians, but so imperfectly known. (Goethe und Werther. Briefe Goethe's, meistens aus seiner Jugendzeit. Herausgegeben von A. Kestner: 1854.) This book, which is very much in need of an editor, is one of the richest sources to which access has been had for a right understanding of Goethe's youth; and it completes the series of corroborative evidence by which to control the Autobiography

greater influence. But it fared with them as with the knights of other Orders. Their strength lay in their zeal ; their zeal abated with success. Years brought them in

creasing wealth, but the spiritual wealth and glory of their cause departed. They became what all Corporations inevitably become, and at the time now written of, they were reduced to a level with the knights of Malta. The Order still possessed property in various parts of Germany, and in certain towns there was a sort of steward's house, where rents were collected and the business of the Order transacted; this was uniformly styled das teutsche Haus. There was such a one in Wetzlar; and the Amtmann, or steward, who had superintendence over it, was a certain Herr Buff, on whom the reader is requested to fix his eye, not for any attractiveness of Herr Buff, intrinsically considered, but for the sake of his eldest daughter, Charlotte. She is the heroine of this episode.

Nor was this house the only echo of the ancient Ritterthum in Wetzlar. Goethe, on his arrival, found there another, and more consciously burlesque parody, in the shape of a Round Table and its Knights, bearing such names as St. Amand the Opiniative, Eustace the Prudent, Lubomirsky the Combative, and so forth. It was founded by August Friedrich von Goué, Secretary to the Brunswick Embassy, of whom we shall hear more: a wild and whimiscal fellow, not without a streak of genius, who drank himself to death. He bore the title of Ritter Coucy, and christened Goethe Götz von Berlichingen der Redliche - - Götz the Honest.' In an imitation of Werther which Goué wrote, a scene introduces this Round Table in one of its banquets at the Tavern ; a knight sings a French song, where upon Götz exclaims, Thou, a Ger

* Masuren, oder der junge Werther. Ein Trauerspiel aus dem Illyrischen. 1775.