That is no news that the Duke of Weimar has arrived!" "Not only the duke has arrived, but he has brought his dear friend with him whom the people in Saxe-Weimar say makes the good and bad weather." "Who is the weather-maker ?" "Your majesty, this weather-maker is the author of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther,' Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who for four years has aroused the hearts and excited the imaginations of all Germany.

If I am not deceived, a great future opens for this poet, and he will be a star of the first magnitude in the sky of German literature.

I believe it would be well worth the trouble for your majesty to see him." "Do not trouble me with your German literature, and your stars of the first magnitude! We must acknowledge our poverty with humility; belles-lettres have never achieved success upon our soil.

Moreover, this star of the first magnitude--this Herr Goethe--I remember him well; I wish to know nothing of him.

He has quite turned the heads of all the love-sick fools with his 'Sorrows of Young Werther.' You cannot count that a merit.