thoughts and cold chills come over us, which fan our inspiration into new flame.  Yes, dear friend, this morning when I awoke it seemed to me as though I had experienced great things, as though the pledges of my heart had wings and soared over hill and dale into the pure, serene, radiant ether.  No vow, no conditions—­nothing but appropriate motion, pure striving for the divine.  This is my pledge:  Freedom from all ties, and that I will have faith only in that spirit which reveals the beautiful and prophesies eternal bliss. * * *

We were on the road five days, and since then it has rained incessantly.  The whole house full of guests, and not even a little corner where I could enjoy solitude and write thee!

As long as I have anything to tell thee, I firmly believe that thy spirit is fixed upon me as upon so many enigmas of nature.  In fact, I believe that every human being is such an enigma, and that the mission of love between friends is to solve that enigma so that each shall learn to know his deeper nature through and in his friend.  Yes, dearest, it makes me happy that my life is gradually developing through thee, and for that reason I do not want to seem what I am not; I should prefer to have all my faults and weaknesses known to thee rather than give thee a false conception of what I am, for then thy love would not concern me but rather an illusion that I had substituted for myself.  For that reason, also, a feeling often warns me that I must avoid this or that for love of thee, because I should deny it in thy presence.

From the Rochusberg.

Oh, Goethe, thy letters are so dear to me that I have tied them up in a silk kerchief embroidered with bright flowers and golden ornaments.  The last day before our Rhine trip I did not know what to do with them.  I did not want to take them along, since we had only one portmanteau between us, and I did not want to leave them in my little room, which I could not lock because it was being used; I thought the boat might sink and I drown—­and then these letters, one after the other of which has reposed close to my heart, would fall into strange hands.  At first I wanted to leave them with the nuns in Vollratz (they are St. Bernard nuns who were driven from their convent and are now living there), but I changed my mind afterwards.  The last time I was up here on the mountain I found a spot.  Beneath the confession-chair still standing in the Rochus chapel, in which I’m also in the habit of keeping my writings, I dug a hole and lined it on the inside with shells from the Rhine and beautiful little pebbles that I found on the mountain.  I placed the letters in it, wrapped in their silken covering, and before the spot planted a thistle which I had pulled up carefully by the roots together with the earth about them.  On the journey I was often worried about them; what a shock it would have been if I had not found them again!  My heart stands still at the very thought of it!