Sunday, December 6.—­Today, after dinner, Goethe read me the first scene of the second act of Faust.[22] The effect was great, and gave me a high satisfaction.  We are once more transported into Faust’s study, where Mephistopheles finds all just as he had left it.  He takes from the hook Faust’s old study-gown, and a thousand moths and insects flutter out from it.  By the directions of Mephistopheles as to where these are to settle down, the locality is brought very clearly before our eyes.  He puts on the gown, while Faust lies behind a curtain in a state of paralysis, intending to play the doctor’s part once more.  He pulls the bell, which gives such an awful tone among the old solitary convent halls, that the doors spring open and the walls tremble.  The servant rushes in, and finds in Faust’s seat Mephistopheles, whom he does not recognize, but for whom he has respect.  In answer to inquiries he gives news of Wagner, who has now become a celebrated man, and is hoping for the return of his master.  He is, we hear, at this moment deeply occupied in his laboratory, seeking to produce a Homunculus.  The servant retires, and the bachelor enters—­the same whom we knew some years before as a shy young student, when Mephistopheles (in Faust’s gown) made game of him.  He is now become a man, and is so full of conceit that even Mephistopheles can do nothing with him, but moves his chair further and further, and at last addresses the pit.

Goethe read the scene quite to the end.  I was pleased with his youthful productive strength, and with the closeness of the whole.  “As the conception,” said Goethe, “is so old—­for I have had it in my mind for fifty years—­the materials have accumulated to such a degree, that the difficult operation is to separate and reject.  The invention of the whole second part is really as old as I say; but it may be an advantage that I have not written it down till now, when my knowledge of the world is so much clearer.  I am like one who in his youth has a great deal of small silver and copper money, which in the course of his life he constantly changes for the better, so that at last the property of his youth stands before him in pieces of pure gold.”

We spoke about the character of the Bachelor.  “Is he not meant,” said I, “to represent a certain class of ideal philosophers?”

“No,” said Goethe, “the arrogance which is peculiar to youth, and of which we had such striking examples after our war for freedom, is personified in him.  Indeed, every one believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

“Thus, in the East, there was actually a man who every morning collected his people about him, and would not go to work till he had commanded the sun to rise.  But he was wise enough not to speak his command till the sun of its own accord was really on the point of appearing.”