speak of _conscia mens_, unfortunately not
_recti_, which I carry about with me." "It is now about time that I
should return [to Strassburg]; I will and will, but what avails
willing in the presence of the faces I see around me? The state of my
heart is strange, and my health is as variable as usual in the world,
which it is long since I have seen so beautiful. The most delightful
country, people who love me, a round of pleasures! Are not the dreams
of thy childhood all fulfilled?--I often ask myself when my eye feeds
on this circumambient bliss. Are not these the fairy gardens after
which thy heart yearned? They are! They are! I feel it, dear friend;
and feel that we are not a whit the happier when our desires are
realised. The make-weight! the make-weight! with which Fate balances
every bliss that we enjoy. Dear friend, there needs much courage not
to lose courage in this world of ours."[92]

[Footnote 91: In the recently discovered manuscript of _Wilhelm
Meisters Theatralische Sendung_ occurs this passage, evidently
self-descriptive: "Als Knabe hatte er zu grossen praechtigen Worten und
Spruechen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmueckte seine Seele damit
aus wie mit einem koestlichen Kleide, und freute sich darueber, als wenn
sie zu ihm selbst gehoerten kindlisch ueber diesen aeussern Schmuck."]

[Footnote 92: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. p. 258 _ff._]

The day of parting came at the end of June; on August 6th he passed
the tests necessary for the Licentiate of Laws, and at the end of that
month he left Strassburg for home. He left Friederike, he tells us, at
a moment when their parting almost cost her her life[93]; did he do
her a greater wrong than his own narrative would imply? We cannot
tell; but one thing is certain, from the first he never intended
marriage. That he had pangs of self-reproach for the part he had
played, his words above quoted may be taken as sufficient evidence,
but alike from temperament and deliberate consideration of the facts
of life he was incapable of the contrition that troubles human nature
to its depths.[94] Yet in our judgment of him it is well to remember
the ideas then current in Germany regarding the relations between love
and marriage. In his seventy-fourth year Goethe himself said: "Love is
something ideal, marriage is something real; and never with impunity
do we exchange the ideal for the real." The severest of moralists,
Kant, was of the same opinion. "The word _conjugium_ i