tead of the cheerful conversations,
instead of the lively parties, a serious solemn parade. My younger
sisters were educated in a spirit quite opposite to that which my
father had wished. Prayers, books of devotion, religious conversation,
filled up the intervals of the day; and my heart grew more and more
vacant; I could not sympathize in their devotion, could not even
believe in its existence. My books, which were my father's presents
too, I no longer ventured to shew; all was worldly and offensive. I was
frightened at the constructions put on passages, which were my greatest
favorites, which I knew by heart. Even Goethe's heavenly nature, his
noble elevation, was seductive sensuality; and a refined prudery, which
to me was in the highest degree disgusting, was to assume the name of
virtue. My sisters, as they came to the age of reflexion, considered me
as a degenerate creature, unsusceptible of any thing good; it was what
they heard every hour, they could not help believing it. Between them
and my mother there sprang a relation, which kept me at an equal
distance from both parties, but for which I could not envy them; an
overstrained love, a delicate tenderness, a soothing and fondling which
often cut me to the heart; nay my mother went so far as to idolize her
younger daughters, to adore them, and to tell them she did so. My
sisters treated my mother nearly in the way that one would hold
intercourse with a departed saint, if she were to return to us; but
this was what I could not carry on for above a day; I was then under
the necessity of seeking a more cheerful intimacy with her, or avoiding
her altogether. I still well remembered how often my father had said,
that in early youth children must learn to obey blindly, in order that,
when grown up, they may be capable of freedom. This freedom of the mind
and heart, which makes man an independent being, which is the
indispensable condition of love, of a free devotion, found however no
room in this close union, nay, whenever it attempted to shew itself, it
was treated as the worst of sins. Not the least weakness, not the
slightest prejudice of my mother was to be touched; even in trifles, on
the subject of an indifferent book, the character of a man, nay even on
the colour of a ribbon, no one was to entertain a different opinion
from her. If but a walk was proposed only to a neighbour's house, nay
in the garden, she forbad it, unless she could or chose to join in it,
not