d his nomination by writing the _Song of the
Bell_, in which he expressed his thanks and begged the revolutionaries
to keep quiet! Well, that's life. We're intelligent people and love _The
Robbers_ as much as _The Song of the Bell_; Schiller as much as Goethe!

STRANGER. The work remains, the master perishes.

MELCHER. Goethe, yes! Number five in the catalogue. He began with
Strassburg cathedral and _Goetz von Berlichingen_, two hurrahs for gothic
Germanic art against that of Greece and Rome. Later he fought against
Germanism and for Classicism. Goethe against Goethe! There you see the
traditional Olympic calm, harmony, etc., in the greatest disharmony
with itself. But depression at this turns into uneasiness when the
young Romantic school appears and combats the Goethe of _Iphigenia_ with
theories drawn from Goethe's _Goetz_. That the 'great heathen' ends up
by converting Faust in the Second Part, and allowing him to be saved by
the Virgin Mary and the angels, is usually passed over in silence by his
admirers. Also the fact that a man of such clear vision should, towards
the end of his life, have found everything so 'strange,' and 'curious,'
even the simplest facts that he'd previously seen through. His last
wish was for 'more light'! Yes; but it doesn't matter. We're intelligent
people and love our Goethe just the same.

STRANGER. And rightly.

MELCHER. Number six in the catalogue. Voltaire! He has more than two
heads. The Godless One, who spent his whole life defending God. The
Mocker, who was mocked, because 'he believed in God like a child.' The
author of the cynical 'Candide,' who wrote:

In my youth I sought the pleasures
Of the senses, but I learned
That their sweetness was illusion
Soon to bitterness it turned.
In old age I've come to see
Life is nought but vanity.

Dr. Knowall, who thought he could grasp everything between Heaven and
Earth by means of reason and science, sings like this, when he comes to
the end of his life:

I had thought to find in knowledge
Light to guide me on my way;
Yet I still must walk in darkness
All that's known must soon decay.
Ignorance, I turn to thee!
Knowledge is but vanity.

But that's no matter! Voltaire can be put to many uses. The Jews use
him against the Christians, and the Christians use him against the Jews,
because he was an anti-Semite, like Luther. Chateaubriand