a point. He accepted the invitation,
announced his resolve to all his friends, and made the necessary
preparations for his journey. The arrangement was that a gentleman of
the Duke's suite, then at Carlsruhe, was to call for him on an
appointed day and convey him to Weimar. The appointed day came, but no
representative of the Duke appeared. To avoid the embarrassment of
meeting friends of whom he had formally taken leave, he kept within
doors, working off his impatience in the composition of a play which
the world was afterwards to know as _Egmont_. More than another week
passed, and, weary of his imprisonment, he stole out in the darkness
enveloped in a long cloak to avoid recognition by chance friends. In
his memory there lived one of these night-wanderings when he stood
beneath Lili's window, heard her sing the song, beginning _Warum
ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich_, in which, in the first freshness of
his love, he had described the witchery with which she had bound him,
and, the song ended, saw from her moving shadow that she paced up and
down the room, evidently deep in thoughts which he leaves us to
divine. Only his fixed resolve to renounce her, he adds in his
narrative of the incident, prevented him from making his presence
known to her.

[Footnote 237: The Duke had previously passed through Frankfort on his
way to Carlsruhe. On that occasion, also, Goethe had been in
intercourse with him.]

There was one member of the Goethe household who was not displeased at
the non-appearance of the ducal representative. The father had from
the first been strenuously opposed to his son's going to Weimar, and
in his opinion the apparent breach of the appointment was only an
illustration of what a commoner was to expect in his intercourse with
the great. His own desire was that his son should proceed to Italy
with the double object of breaking his connection with Lili, and of
enlarging his experience by an acquaintance with that country and its
treasures. The embarrassing predicament of his son offered the
opportunity of realising his desire, and he now proposed to him that
he should at once start for Italy and leave his cares behind him. In
the circumstances there appeared to be no other alternative, and on
October 30th Goethe left Frankfort with Italy as his intended goal.
Heidelberg was to be his first stage, and on the way thither he began
the Journal in which he meant to record the narrative of his travels.
The two page