seventy-five years old, and lived in an old
house by herself. Bettina went to her, with her head sunk in grief, and
her heart yearning for somebody to make a friend of, and sat down on a
stool at the old lady's feet, and said, "I have lost my Guenderode, will
you be my friend in her stead?" And the old lady was delighted, and kissed
her; and Bettina sat at her feet, day after day, from that time forth; and
they were the two tenderest friends in Germany. And a pleasant thing it
would be to have been a mouse in the wall to hear such conversation as was
carried on by the two.

Now, in the year 1749, there was born a boy in Frankfort,--a poet, great
in soul--the maker of his country's literature--no other than the
illustrious Goethe--a son worthy of such a mother as Bettina's friend; and
while all Germany and France--the whole civilized world in short--were
almost worshipping his matured, perhaps his decaying genius, the noble
mother was loud and eloquent in her description of him as a boy--as a
youth--as a poet of twenty years old; and the little girl of fifteen sat
and listened, till there arose in her heart--or rather in her brain, for
it was a stirring of the intellect more than the affections--a feeling of
intense admiration, softened under the mother's teaching into something
that she herself fancied was love; for which audacious fancy the sagacious
old woman gave her some raps over the knuckles--(we are not sure that they
were altogether figurative either, but good substantial raps)--enough to
make the fingers tingle in a very disagreeable manner indeed. But in spite
of raps, whether figurative or not, she went on feeding her fancy with all
these glowing accounts; and for a while we have no doubt that she never
gave the almanac a thought--nor the baptismal register--nor the fact,
known to all arithmeticians, that a person born in 1749 was fifty-eight
years old in 1807. Fifty-eight years old, with long white hair. But
Bettina had never seen him. She only knew him in his works as a poet, and
as a man--or rather as a boy--in the beautiful recollections of his
mother. "You don't ask after Wolfgang," says that sensible old matron in
one of her letters; "I've always said to you--wait a while till some one
else comes, you'll not trouble your _head_ about _him_ any more." But in
the mean time she did trouble her _head_ about him to an intolerable
extent; and great was her rejoicing when her brother-in-law offered to
take her