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CHARLES AUGUSTUS AND GOETHE.
"Now tell me, Wolf," asked Duke Charles Augustus, stretching himself comfortably on the sofa, puffing clouds of smoke from his pipe--"are you not weary of dawdling about in this infamously superb pile of stones, called Berlin?
Shall we any longer elegantly scrape to the right and to the left, with abominable sweet speeches and mere flattering phraseology, in this monster of dust and stone, of sand and sun, parades and gaiters?
Have you not enough of blustering generals, of affected women?
and of running about the streets like one possessed to see here a miserable church, or there a magnificent palace?
Are you not weary of crawling about as one of the many, while at home you stride about as the only one of the many?
And weary also of seeing your friend and pupil Carl August put off with fair promises and hollow speeches like an insignificant, miserable mortal, without being able to answer with thundering invectives.

Ah! breath fails me.

I feel as if I could load a pistol with myself, and with a loud report shoot over to dear Weimar.
Wolf, do talk, I beg you, I am tired out; answer me." "I reply, I shoot, my dear Carl," cried Goethe, laughing.

"I was out of breath myself from that long speech.