It was thus the Spring began in Heidelberg.

CHAPTER II.  A COLLOQUY.

“And what think you of Tiedge’s Urania,” said the Baron smiling, as Paul Flemming closed the book, and laid it upon the table.

“I think,” said Flemming, “that it is very much like Jean Paul’s grandfather,—­in the highest degree poor and pious.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed the Baron.  “That is the best criticism I have heard upon the book.  For my part, I dislike the thing as much as Goethe did.  It was once very popular, and lay about in every parlour and bed-room.  This annoyed the old gentleman exceedingly; and I do not wonder at it.  He complains, that at one time nothing was sung or said but this Urania.  He believed in Immortality; but wished to cherish his belief inquietness.  He once told a friend of his, that he had, however, learned one thing from all this talk about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy.  He said he found stupid women, who were proud because they believed in Immortality with Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on this point; and that he cut them short by saying, that he had no objection whatever to enter into another state of existence hereafter, but prayed only that he might be spared the honor of meeting any of those there, who had believed in it here; for, if he did, the saints would flock around him on all sides, exclaiming, Were we not in the right?  Did we not tell you so?  Has it not all turned out just as we said?  And, with such a conceited clatter in his ears, he thought that, before the end of six months, he might die of ennui in Heaven itself.”

“How shocked the good old ladies must have been,” said Flemming.

“No doubt, their nerves suffered a little; but the young ladies loved him all the better for being witty and wicked; and thought if they could only marry him, how they would reform him.”

“Bettina Brentano, for instance.”

“O no!  That happened long afterwards.  Goethe was then a silver-haired old man of sixty.  She had never seen him, and knew him only by his writings; a romantic girl of seventeen.”

“And yet much in love with the Sexagenarian.  And surely a more wild, fantastic, and, excuse me, German passion never sprang up in woman’s breast.  She was a flower, that worshipped the sun.”

“She afterwards married Achim von Arnim, and is now a widow.  And not the least singular part of the affair, is, that, having grown older, and I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters which passed between her and Goethe.”

“Particularly the letter in which she describes her first visit to Weimar, and her interview with the hitherto invisible divinity of her dreams.  The old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder.  It reminds me of Titania and Nick Bottom, begging your pardon, always, for comparing your All-sided-One to Nick Bottom.  Oberon must have touched her eyes with the juice of Love-in-idleness.  However, this book of Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child is a very singular and valuable revelation of the feelings, which he excited in female hearts.  You say she afterwards married Achim von Arnim?”