words which I put into her mouth, I have expressed how the
nobility really ought to think. The countess has just returned from
Paris; she has there been an eye-witness of the revolutionary events,
and has drawn, therefore, for herself, no bad doctrine. She has
convinced herself that the people may be ruled, but not oppressed, and
that the revolutionary outbreaks of the lower classes are the
consequence of the injustice of the higher classes. 'I will for the
future,' says she, 'strenuously avoid every action that appears to me
unjust, and will, both in society and at court, loudly express my
opinion concerning such actions in others. In no case of injustice will
I be silent, even though I should be cried down as a democrat.'

"I should have thought this sentiment perfectly respectable," continued
Goethe; "it was mine at that time, and it is so still; but as a reward
for it, I was endowed with all sorts of titles, which I do not care to
repeat."

"One need only read _Egmont_," answered I, "to discover what you think.
I know no German piece in which the freedom of the people is more
advocated than in this."

"Sometimes," said Goethe, "people do not like to look on me as I am,
but turn their glances from everything which could show me in my true
light. Schiller, on the contrary--who, between ourselves, was much more
of an aristocrat than I am, but who considered what he said more than
I--had the wonderful fortune to be looked upon as a particular friend of
the people. I give it up to him with all my heart, and console myself
with the thought that others before me had fared no better.

"It is true that I could be no friend to the French Revolution; for its
horrors were too near me, and shocked me daily and hourly, whilst its
beneficial results were not then to be discovered. Neither could I be
indifferent to the fact that the Germans were endeavoring, artificially,
to bring about such scenes here, as were, in France, the consequence of
a great necessity.

"But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule. Indeed, I was perfectly
convinced that a great revolution is never a fault of the people, but of
the government. Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as
governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant, so that they
may anticipate them by improvements at the right time, and not hold out
until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath.

"Because I hated the Revolution, the name of the '_Friend of