Listen, what a savage yell from under the bridge, and then another more
unearthly!

The peasant, frightened, stopped suddenly, and looked down into the
river. "Oh, what can it be?"

A glistening white arm is raised menacingly toward the bridge. A white
figure, with a black head and long black hair, is seen plunging
and splashing, while fearful yells are heard from the deep. Then it
disappeared, to return, and menace, and yell, and plunge again.

The peasant shrieked with terror, and was answered with a cruel laugh.
The white figure sank and rose from the river screeching and yelling,
and the peasant shrieked also with terror.

"A ghost! a ghost! oh, have mercy upon us! Amen! amen!"

Fright lent him wings, and he fled, followed by the savage yells of the
white figure, and never stopped until he reached Oberweimar, where
he related to the astonished and terrified neighbors that there was
a river-ghost just by the bridge which led to the cottage of the
mad secretary of legation, Goethe, and which howled in the
moonlight.[Footnote: This tradition of the ghost of the Ilm has been
preserved in Weimar, since Goethe's nocturnal bath, until our time.--See
Lewes, vol. i., p. 451.]

With the peasant also disappeared the ghost of the Ilm.

Like a happy child of Nature, refreshed, Goethe went to his room and
then again sought the balcony, to throw himself upon the carpet and
gaze at the blue starry vault, and enjoy the glories of heaven with
thoughtful devotion, and think of Charlotte--only of her, not once of
the poor Thusnelda von Goechhausen, who passed the night upon the
stairs of the Palace Belvedere, and who, at last weary with fright and
exhaustion, fell asleep, and was awakened by the Duchess Amelia in
the morning, laughingly demanding why she preferred the landing of the
stairs for a place of repose.

"Because I am bewitched, duchess, and my sleeping-room has disappeared
from earth--because some cursed demon or wizard has enchanted me, this
wicked--"

"Beware what you say!" interrupted the duchess; "it is most probably the
duke that you are inveighing against, and calling a demon and wizard."

At this Thusnelda sprang up as if struck by an electric shock--"The
surprise, this is what the duke promised me."

"Very likely," laughed the duchess. "The courier just arrived with a
letter from my son to you, and I came to bring it myself, and found you,
to my surprise, sleeping here. Read it, and tell me what he says!