em, and understood that there had been a
thousand others, looking forward to a new era in German literature with
the desire which is in some sort a "forecast of capacity," awakening
each other to the permanent reality of a poetic ideal in human life,
slowly forming that public consciousness to which Goethe actually
addressed himself. It is their aspirations I have tried to embody in
the portrait of Carl.

A hard winter had covered the Main with a firm footing of ice. The
liveliest social intercourse was quickened thereon. I was unfailing
from early morning onwards; and, being lightly clad, found myself, when
my mother drove up later [153] to look on, fairly frozen. My mother
sat in the carriage, quite stately in her furred cloak of red velvet,
fastened on the breast with thick gold cord and tassels.

"Dear mother," I said, on the spur of the moment, "give me your furs, I
am frozen."

She was equally ready. In a moment I had on the cloak. Falling below
the knee, with its rich trimming of sables, and enriched with gold, it
became me excellently. So clad I made my way up and down with a
cheerful heart.

That was Goethe, perhaps fifty years later. His mother also related
the incident to Bettina Brentano;--"There, skated my son, like an arrow
among the groups. Away he went over the ice like a son of the gods.
Anything so beautiful is not to be seen now. I clapped my hands for
joy. Never shall I forget him as he darted out from one arch of the
bridge, and in again under the other, the wind carrying the train
behind him as he flew." In that amiable figure I seem to see the
fulfilment of the Resurgam on Carl's empty coffin--the aspiring soul of
Carl himself, in freedom and effective, at last.

[THE END]

End of Project Gutenberg's Imaginary Portraits, by Walter Horatio Pater

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