two not
affinities? Why should she prevent them from living this innocent life
with and near each other? They are twins; twined round each other they
ripen on to their birth into the light, and she would separate these
seedlings because she cannot believe in innocence, which she inoculates
with the monstrous sin of prejudice! O what a fatal precaution!

Let me tell you: No one seems to comprehend ideal love; they all believe
in sensual love, and consequently they neither experience nor bestow any
happiness that springs from that higher emotion or might be fully
realized through it. Whatever may fall to my lot, let it be through this
ideal love that tears down all barriers to new worlds of art,
divination, and poetry. Naturally it can live only in a noble element
just as it feels at home only in a lofty mind.

Here thy Mignon occurs to me--how she dances blindfolded between eggs.
My love is adroit; you can rely thoroughly on its instinct; it will also
dance on blindly, and will make no misstep. * * *

November 29, 1809.

I had written thus far yesterday, when I crept into bed from fear, but I
could not succeed yesterday in falling asleep at thy feet, lost in
contemplation of thee as I do every evening. I was ashamed that I had
chattered so arrogantly, and perhaps all is not as I mean it. Maybe it
is jealousy that excites me so and impels me to seek a way to draw thee
to me again and make thee forget _her_.[13]

Well, put me to the test, and, be it as it may, do not forget my love.
Forgive me also for sending thee my diary. I wrote it on the Rhine and
have spread out before thee my childhood years and shown thee how our
mutual affinity drove me on like a rivulet hastening on over crags and
rocks, through thorns and mosses, till thou, mighty stream, didst engulf
me. Yes, I wanted to keep this book until I should at last be with thee
again, so that I might tell by looking into thy eyes in the morning what
thou hadst read in it the evening before. But now it torments me to
think of thee substituting my diary for Ottilie's, and loving the living
one who remains with thee more than the one who has departed from thee.

Do not burn my letters, do not tear them up, for it might give thee
pain--so firmly, so absolutely, am I joined to thee. But do not show
them to any one; keep them concealed like a secret beauty, for my love
is becoming to thee; thou art beautiful because thou feelest thyself
loved!

February 29, 1810.