te 62: _Beziehungen_, p. 217 n.]

The great transaction of her life, her marriage with Reinwald, Court
Librarian of Meiningen, had its origin in 1783; the fruit of that
forced retreat of Schiller's to Bauerbach, and of the eight months he
spent there, under covert, anonymously and in secret, as 'Dr. Ritter,'
with Reinwald for his one friend and adviser. Reinwald, who commanded
the resources of an excellent Library, and of a sound understanding,
long seriously and painfully cultivated, was of essential use to
Schiller; and is reckoned to be the first real guide or useful
counsellor he ever had in regard to Literature. One of Christophine's
Letters to her Brother, written at her Father's order, fell by
accident on Reinwald's floor, and was read by him,--awakening in his
over-clouded, heavy-laden mind a gleam of hope and aspiration. "This
wise, prudent, loving-hearted and judicious young woman, of such clear
and salutary principles of wisdom as to economics too, what a blessing
she might be to me as Wife in this dark, lonely home of mine!" Upon
which hint he spake; and Schiller, as we saw above, who loved him
well, but knew him to be within a year or two of fifty, always ailing
in health, taciturn, surly, melancholy, and miserably poor, was
rebuked by Papa for thinking it questionable. We said, it came about
all the same. Schiller had not yet left Mannheim for the second and
last time, when, in 1784, Christophine paid him a visit, escorted
thither by Reinwald; who had begged to have that honour allowed him;
having been at Solituede, and, either there or on his road to Mannheim,
concluded his affair. Streicher, an eyewitness of this visit, says,
"The healthy, cheerful and blooming Maiden had determined to share her
future lot with a man whose small income and uncertain health seemed
to promise little joy. Nevertheless her reasons were of so noble a
sort, that she never repented, in times following, this sacrifice of
her fancy to her understanding, and to a Husband of real worth."[63]
They were married "June 1786;" and for the next thirty, or indeed, in
all, sixty years, Christophine lived in her dark new home at
Meiningen; and never, except in that melancholy time of sickness,
mortality and war, appears to have seen Native Land and Parents again.

[Footnote 63: _Schwab_, p. 173, citing Streicher's words.]

What could have induced, in the calm and well-discerning Christophine,
such a resolution, is by no means clear; S