urthermore, he thought it permissible to show himself to
his Family with a certain composure of attitude; and opened
straightway a regular correspondence with his Parents again. And
Captain Schiller volunteers a stiff-starched but true and earnest
Letter to the Baron Dalberg himself; most humbly thanking that
gracious nobleman for such beneficent favour shown my poor Son; and
begs withal the far stranger favour that Dalberg would have the
extreme goodness to appoint the then inexperienced young man some true
friend who might help him to arrange his housekeeping, and in moral
things might be his Mentor!

'Soon after this, an intermittent fever threw the Poet on a sick-bed;
and lamed him above five weeks from all capacity of mental labour. Not
even in June of the following year was the disease quite overcome.
Visits, acquaintanceships, all kinds of amusements, and more than
anything else, over-hasty attempts at work, delayed his cure;--so that
his Father had a perfect right to bring before him his, Schiller's,
own blame in the matter: "That thou"' (_Er_, He; the then usual tone
towards servants and children) '"for eight whole months hast weltered
about with intermittent fever, surely that does little honour to thy
study of medicine; and thou wouldst, with great justice, have poured
the bitterest reproaches on any Patient who, in a case like thine, had
not held himself to the diet and regimen that were prescribed to
him!"--

'In Autumn 1783, there seized Schiller so irresistible a longing to
see his kindred again, that he repeatedly expressed to his Father the
great wish he had for a meeting, either at Mannheim or some other
place outside the Wuertemberg borders. To the fulfilment of this scheme
there were, however, in the sickness which his Mother had fallen into,
in the fettered position of the Father, and in the rigorously frugal
economies of the Family, insuperable obstacles. Whereupon his Father
made him the proposal, that he, Friedrich, either himself or by him,
the Captain, should apply to the Duke Karl's Serene Highness; and
petition him for permission to return to his country and kindred. As
Schiller to this answered nothing, Christophine time after time
pressingly repeated to him the Father's proposal. At the risk of again
angering his Father, Schiller gave, in his answer to Christophine, of
1st January 1784, the decisive declaration that his honour would
frightfully suffer if he, without connection with any ot