e to time to the alarmed Parents, that "their Son had no
feeling whatever for religion." In this respect, however, the
otherwise so irritable Father easily satisfied himself, not only by
his own observations of an opposite tendency, but chiefly by stricter
investigation of one little incident that was reported to him. The
teacher of religion in the Latin school, Superintendent Zilling, whose
name is yet scornfully remembered, had once, in his dull awkwardness,
introduced even Solomon's Song as an element of nurture for his class;
and was droning out, in an old-fashioned way, his interpretation of it
as symbolical of the Christian Church and its Bridegroom Christ, when
he was, on the sudden, to his no small surprise and anger, interrupted
by the audible inquiry of little Schiller, "But was this Song, then,
actually sung to the Church?" Schiller Senior took the little heretic
to task for this rash act; and got as justification the innocent
question, "Has the Church really got teeth of ivory?" The Father was
enlightened enough to take the Boy's opposition for a natural
expression of sound human sense; nay, he could scarcely forbear a
laugh; whirled swiftly round, and murmured to himself, "Occasionally
she has Wolf's teeth." And so the thing was finished.[49]

[Footnote 49: _Saupe_, p. 18.]

'At Ludwigsburg Schiller and Christophine first saw a Theatre; where
at that time, in the sumptuous Duke's love of splendour, only pompous
operas and ballets were given. The first effect of this new enjoyment,
which Fritz and his Sister strove to repeat as often as they could,
was that at home, with little clipped and twisted paper dolls, they
set about representing scenes; and on Christophine's part it had the
more important result of awakening and nourishing, at an early age,
her aesthetic taste. Schiller considered her, ever after these youthful
sports, as a true and faithful companion in his poetic dreams and
attempts; and constantly not only told his Sister, whose silence on
such points could be perfect, of all that he secretly did in the way
of verse-making in the Karl's School,--which, as we shall see, he
entered in 1773,--but if possible brought it upon the scene with her.
Scenes from the lyrical operetta of _Semele_ were acted by Schiller
and Christophine, on those terms; which appears in a complete shape
for the first time in Schiller's _Anthology_, printed 1782.[50]

[Footnote 50: Ibid. p. 109.]

'So soon as Fri