He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only.  It is the sole source of everything of our strength, happiness, and misery.  All the knowledge I possess every one else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.

May 25.

I have had a plan in my head of which I did not intend to speak to you until it was accomplished:  now that it has failed, I may as well mention it.  I wished to enter the army, and had long been desirous of taking the step.  This, indeed, was the chief reason for my coming here with the prince, as he is a general in the service.  I communicated my design to him during one of our walks together.  He disapproved of it, and it would have been actual madness not to have listened to his reasons.

June 11.

Say what you will, I can remain here no longer.  Why should I remain?  Time hangs heavy upon my hands.  The prince is as gracious to me as any one could be, and yet I am not at my ease.  There is, indeed, nothing in common between us.  He is a man of understanding, but quite of the ordinary kind.  His conversation affords me no more amusement than I should derive from the perusal of a well-written book.  I shall remain here a week longer, and then start again on my travels.  My drawings are the best things I have done since I came here.  The prince has a taste for the arts, and would improve if his mind were not fettered by cold rules and mere technical ideas.  I often lose patience, when, with a glowing imagination, I am giving expression to art and nature, he interferes with learned suggestions, and uses at random the technical phraseology of artists.

July 16.

Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world.  But what else are you!

July 18.

Whither am I going?  I will tell you in confidence.  I am obliged to continue a fortnight longer here, and then I think it would be better for me to visit the mines in —.  But I am only deluding myself thus.  The fact is, I wish to be near Charlotte again, that is all.  I smile at the suggestions of my heart, and obey its dictates.

July 29.

No, no! it is yet well all is well!  I her husband!  O God, who gave me being, if thou hadst destined this happiness for me, my whole life would have been one continual thanksgiving!  But I will not murmur —­ forgive these tears, forgive these fruitless wishes.  She —­ my wife!  Oh, the very thought of folding that dearest of Heaven’s creatures in my arms!  Dear Wilhelm, my whole frame feels convulsed when I see Albert put his arms around her slender waist!

And shall I avow it?  Why should I not, Wilhelm?  She would have been happier with me than with him.  Albert is not the man to satisfy the wishes of such a heart.  He wants a certain sensibility; he wants —­ in short, their hearts do not beat in unison.  How often, my dear friend, I’m reading a passage from some interesting book, when my heart and Charlotte’s seemed to meet, and in a hundred other instances when our sentiments were unfolded by the story of some fictitious character, have I felt that we were made for each other!  But, dear Wilhelm, he loves her with his whole soul; and what does not such a love deserve?