Enough--we have separated, we are happy.... Behrisch, we are living in
the pleasantest, friendliest intercourse.... We began with love and we
end with friendship."[32] Goethe makes one of his characters say that
estranged lovers, if they only manage things well, may still remain
friends, and the remark was prompted by more than one experience of
his own.
[Footnote 32: _Ib._ pp. 158-9.]
When he was past his seventieth year, Goethe made a remark to his
friend, Chancellor von Mueller, which is applicable to every period of
his life: "In the hundred things which interest me," he said, "there
is always one which, as chief planet, holds the central place, and
meanwhile the remaining Quodlibet of my life circles round it in
many-changing phases, till each and all succeed in reaching the
centre." Even in these distracted Leipzig years the mental process
thus described is clearly visible. Neither Goethe's loves nor his
other dissipations ever permanently dulled the intellectual side of
his nature. While he was writing morbid letters to Behrisch, he was
directing the studies of his sister with all the seriousness of a
youthful pedagogue.
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