Sometimes when I see you so simpering, so modest and ceremonious, I ask myself, with anxiety, if it is the same Wolfgang Goethe, who used to drink 'Smollis' with me at merry bacchanals out of death-skulls ?--the same with whom I used to practise whip-cracking upon the market-place hours long, to the terror of the good citizens ?--the same who used to dance so nimbly the two-steps, and was inexhaustible in mad pranks.

Now tell me, Herr Wolfgang, are you yourself, or are you another ?" "I am myself, and not myself," answered Goethe, smiling.

"There still remains a good portion of folly in me, and it must sometimes thunder and flash, but I hope the atmosphere of my soul will become clearer, and over the crater a more lovely garden will spread out, in which beautiful, fragrant flowers will bloom, useful and profitable for my friends and myself.

Sometimes I long for this as for the promised land; then again it foams and thunders in me like fermenting must, which, defying all covers and hoops, would froth up to heaven in an immense source of mad excitement!" "Let it froth and foam, and spring the covers, and burst the old casks," cried the duke; "I delight in it, and every infernal noise you make, the prouder I am to recognize that from this foaming must will clear itself a marvellous wine, a delicious beverage for gods and men, with which the world will yet refresh itself, when we are long gone to the kingdom of shades--to the something or nothing.

You know, Wolf, I love you, and I am proud that I have you! It is true that I possess only a little duchy, but it is large enough to lead an agreeable and comfortable existence--large enough for a little earthly duke, and the great king of intellects, Johann Wolfgang Goethe.