Now, therefore, my deepest feelings broke
forth with irrepressible force." After a few days spent at Pempelfort,
during which Georg Jacobi joined them, the two brothers accompanied
Goethe to Cologne on his homeward journey. It was during the hours
they were together at Cologne that the conversation of Fritz and
Goethe became most intimate, and these hours remained a moving memory
with both even when in after years divided aims and interests had
estranged them. A visit to the cathedral of Cologne recalled Goethe's
enthusiasm for the cathedral of Strassburg, but its unfinished
condition depressed him with the sense of a great idea unrealised, for
in his own words "an unfinished work is like one destroyed." The
emotions evoked by another spectacle in Duesseldorf, according to
Goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining
for life the confidence of both Jacobis. The sight which equally moved
all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of
Cologne named Jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as
an amateur of the fine arts. But what specially impressed them was a
picture by Le Brun representing Jabach and his family in all the
freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was
the sole memorial that they had ever lived.
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