great, Goethe and the good
Schiller," they remain; and yet, March reasoned, there was something good
in Goethe and something great, in Schiller.
He was so full of the pathos of their inequality before the world that he
did not heed the warning on the door of the pastry-shop near the Schiller
house, and on opening it he bedaubed his hand with the fresh paint on it.
He was then in such a state, that he could not bring his mind to bear
upon the question of which cakes his wife would probably prefer, and he
stood helplessly holding up his hand till the good woman behind the
counter discovered his plight, and uttered a loud cry of compassion. She
ran and got a wet napkin, which she rubbed with soap, and then she
instructed him by word and gesture to rub his hand upon it, and she did
not leave him till his rescue was complete. He let her choose a variety
of the cakes for him, and came away with a gay paper bag full of them,
and with the feeling that he had been in more intimate relations with the
life of Weimar than travellers are often privileged to be. He argued from
the instant and intelligent sympathy of the pastry woman a high grade of
culture in all classes; and he conceived the notion of pretending to Mrs.
March that he had got these cakes from, a descendant of Schiller.
His deceit availed with her for the brief moment in which she always,
after so many years' experience of his duplicity, believed anything he
told her. They dined merrily together at their hotel, and then Burnamy
came down to the station with them and was very comfortable to March in
helping him to get their tickets and their baggage registered. The train
which was to take them to Halle, where they were to change for Berlin,
was rather late, and they had but ten minutes after it came in before it
would start again. Mrs. March was watching impatiently at the window of
the waiting-room for the dismounting passengers to clear the platform and
allow the doors to be opened; suddenly she gave a cry, and turned and ran
into the passage by which the new arrivals were pouring out toward the
superabundant omnibuses. March and Burnamy, who had been talking apart,
mechanically rushed after her and found her kissing Miss Triscoe and
shaking hands with the general amidst a tempest of questions and answers,
from which it appeared that the Triscoes had got tired of staying in
Wurzburg, and had simply come on to Weimar a day sooner than they had
intended.
The gener
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