, only relieved by my stolen hours of blissful
study, I gained my reward. I was free! My examination passed, I was
honored with the degrees of Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Arts.
After many intervening events, I was appointed conrector of the college
attached to the Gray Monastery, which position now supports me."

"God be praised, I breathe freely!" answered Goethe, with one of those
sunny smiles which, in a moment of joyful excitement, lighted up his
face. "I feel like one shipwrecked, who has, at last, reached a safe
harbor. I rejoice in your rescue as if it were my own. Now you are
safe. You have reached the port, and in the quiet happiness of your
own library you will win new laurels. Why, then, still dispirited and
unhappy? The past, with its sorrows and humiliations, is forgotten, the
present is satisfactory, and the future is full of hope for you."

"Full of misery is the present," cried Philip, angrily, "and filled with
despair I glance at the future. You do not see it with your divine
eyes, you do not perceive it, poet with the sympathetic soul. You, too,
thought that Philip Moritz had only a head for the sciences, and forgot
that he had a heart to love. I tell you that he has a warm, affectionate
heart, torn with grief and all the tortures of jealousy; that
disappointed happiness maddens him. I was not created to be happy, and
my whole being longs for happiness. Oh! I would willingly give my life
for one day by the side of the one I love."

"Do not trifle," said Goethe, angrily. "He who has striven and struggled
as you have, dare not offer, for any woman, however beautiful and
seductive, to yield his life, which has been destined to a higher aim
than mere success in love. Perhaps you think that God has infused a
ray of His intelligence into the mind of man, created him immortal,
and breathed upon him with His world-creating breath only, to make him
happy, and find that happiness in love! No! my friend, God has given to
man like faculties with Himself, and inspired him, that he might be a
worthy representative of Him upon the earth; that he should prove, in
his life, that he is not only the blossom, but the fruit also, of
God's creation. Love is to man the perfume of his existence. She may
intoxicate him for a while, may inspire him to poetical effusions,
to great deeds, even; but he should hesitate to let her become his
mistress, to let her be the tyrant of his existence. If she would
enchain him, he m