Brightly, against this dull background of German princelets, shines the torch of the German spirit. “I have gained only one thing here to take back with me to Paris: that you will have a pleasant memory of me.” To the Weimar circle, the Emperor says these words on the evening of his departure, for here and in Erfurt he has spent several evenings among those who are the true princes of Germany—princes who have no ancestors, but only genius. Himself a genius without ancestors, it is solely among them that he feels at home; though, during this fortnight, he experiences so much that increases his misanthropic contempt for his fellow-men, a contempt which has its counterpart in the respect he feels for the German spirit. The works of the masters of German literature are, indeed, unknown to him; but he knows their reputation, he knows the position they occupy in the invisible German and the imperial French Republic. That is why he seeks them out.

Two years before, in Potsdam, he had summoned Johannes von Müller to his presence, and nothing throws a stronger light upon the significance of their conversation than the reserve with which the Prussianised Swiss historian treats the incident. With all the precision of a mind that knew so well how to classify its materials, the Emperor was able, without periphrases, to come direct to the topics which must interest every historian, and were especially interesting to this one. Within three minutes, the pair were deep in the profoundest problems of history.

The Emperor spoke of Tacitus. Then he sketched the main epochs of intellectual life, and waxed enthusiastic concerning the wonderful manner in which Greek culture was renovated by Christianity when Roman culture was decaying. How adroit had been the Greek tactic, when Greece, conquered by the Roman sword, had found a way to reassert her dominance over the things of the spirit. These words, addressed by Napoleon so soon after the battle of Jena to a man of learning in Prussian service, convey both recognition and a challenge. The Emperor showed himself even more affable by going on to advise Müller to write a history of the Napoleonic exploits—advice he had never given to any Frenchman. Then he spoke of the basis of all religions, and of the need for religion. “The conversation was a long one,” writes Müller. “It embraced nearly all lands and nations in its scope.... The more interesting he became, the more did he drop his voice, so that at length I had to come very close to him, and no one else in the room can have heard what he was saying. Much of it, indeed, I shall never disclose.”

From this remarkable conclusion to a bald report, we may infer, not only the discretion of the grave historian, but also the splendid frankness which the Emperor could show when holding forth in monologue to a man of mark.

Now, in Weimar, he pays especial attention to old Wieland, compares him to Voltaire, but asks him rather critically when he mixes up romance and history. “A man of outstanding intelligence, like you, should know how to keep them apart. Running them together is apt to lead to confusion.”

Something more serious than literary criticism is involved, for when Wieland ably defends his misuse of history, and goes on to speak of virtue as an example, the Emperor pulls him up with customary bluntness, saying: “But don’t you know what happens to people who are always expounding virtue in the realm of fable and nowhere else? In the end they come to believe that virtue itself is nothing more than a fable.”

Napoleon turns back to Tacitus, for he always keeps a sharp eye on this Roman historian, as if the man, like Madame de Staël to-day, might still work mischief in Parisian drawing-rooms. As a development of this criticism, speaking in a modern ball-room, Napoleon utters great things concerning the activities of men: “Tacitus has not sufficiently studied the causes and the inner motives of events. His enquiries into the mystery of actions and states of mind have not been sufficiently profound to enable him to hand down an unprejudiced judgment to posterity. A historian should take men and nations as they are, should appraise them as their time and their circumstances have made them.... I have heard him extolled because he would fain make tyrants dread the people, but that would be very unfortunate for the people! Perhaps I am boring you? We did not come here to talk about Tacitus. Look how beautifully Emperor Alexander dances!”

Wieland has been waiting for this moment. In a carefully prepared speech, he defends the old Roman against the new, so that, at the end, the Weimarian dignitaries and any others who are listening cannot restrain their jubilation.

The Emperor has listened attentively. All now look at him, wondering what he will say. Will he politely withdraw from the discussion? Napoleon, as if on the battle-field, has been wondering upon what private information his adversary’s unexpected attack can have been based, and how the onslaught can best be parried. Unquestionably, the speech was not improvised. But how on earth had it entered Wieland’s mind to get up that particular topic? Suddenly the Emperor, who in the interim has talked to hundreds upon hundreds of persons, recalls his conversation with Johannes von Müller two years back.

“I certainly have a strong opponent,” he says, when the old gentleman has finished the harangue. “You make full use of your advantages. Do you happen to be in correspondence with Herr Müller, whom I met in Potsdam?”

Every one in the audience smiles, including Wieland, who is fonder of wit than of himself, and frankly rejoins:

“Yes, Sire, it was he who told me that you do not like Tacitus.”

“Well, I do not admit defeat,” says the Emperor. He returns to his Greek and Christian ideas, develops them further and more boldly, for he sees that the clever old Wieland is a sceptic: “Furthermore,” he says in low tones, shading his mouth with his hand, and coming close to his interlocutor, “it remains an open question whether Christ ever lived.”

Conqueror and poet. One of them is still in his prime, a ruler who has re-established the Christian faith upon the ruins of the revolutionary cult of reason, but is now more or less at odds with the Church. The other is a venerable poet, a pagan whom Napoleon has just coupled with Voltaire, a man who has maintained the cause of reason against the cause of Christ, a member of a conquered nation, and physically so frail that again and again he has to lean on the back of a chair. The former whispers to the latter that it is probable Christ never lived. But the old man has for half a century been justly regarded as the wittiest among the Germans. He will show the Emperor that, in the intellectual world at any rate, a German can courteously exchange thrusts with a Frenchman, and he hastens to reply: “I know that there are foolish people who doubt that Christ lived. But it would be just as absurd to doubt that Julius Cæsar lived; or that you, Sire, are alive to-day!”

Thus with a sally in the French manner Wieland upholds both German courtesy and wit, and the historicity of Christ. The Emperor, without committing himself, is content to drop the subject, and to clap the poet on the shoulder, saying: “Excellent, excellent, Herr Wieland!” Then raising his voice, he talks to his ball-room audience about the value of Christianity as one of the buttresses of the State. But although he was obviously eager to continue his talk with Wieland, the latter showed plainly that he was too tired to stand any longer, and thus the old man’s fatigue put a premature end to a scene which the aid of a couple of chairs might have made even more valuable.

One of the silent witnesses of this conversation was Goethe.

A few days earlier, in Erfurt, the Emperor had had an hour’s talk with Goethe. They were together in a room where, as was Napoleon’s custom when on a journey, he breakfasted, received, commanded, philosophised, and signed documents. Their conversation was a union of two minds, the balancing of counter-poised electrical forces. It was a process of mutual accommodation in which the two greatest men of their day contemplated the world together; a duologue in which most of their thoughts were never uttered, and in which the best elements were an expression of the homage the two paid one another. Goethe, who learned everything from nature, though in the reality of the world of men he could only find the confirmation of his previous imaginings, felt that this conversation was one of the greatest events in his life, and he described it as such. To the Emperor it was less significant.

For Goethe had followed the Emperor’s course for a decade, marvelling all the while; and in his old age he said such profound things about Napoleon that a century after their utterance they have not been excelled. Napoleon, on the other hand, knew almost nothing about Goethe; in especial, he never surmised the poet’s personal admiration for himself, since the German had hitherto confided his feelings only to his intimates, and even now kept his own counsel. Though the Emperor had read _Werther_ several times, the mood that work had aroused was as completely a thing of the past as those youthful feelings which are merely compensatory derivatives for an unoccupied imagination. What this grey-headed poet now signified, was at that time not realised by more than a hundred Germans, and hardly one Frenchman; and, since his name in his own country was little known (and, where known, was unpopular and evoked no enthusiasm), it was natural that the Emperor should know nothing of him save that he had written some wonderful things which were unknown to any except the poet’s immediate circle, and that Goethe, at the time of the battle of Jena, was minister to that Saxon prince who had incurred the Emperor’s displeasure. When Napoleon summoned Goethe to an audience, he had less to expect from the poet than he had expected from Müller and from Wieland.

But such as Napoleon and Goethe need but look in a man’s eyes to know all about him. Napoleon sits breakfasting at a large, round table; on his right is Talleyrand; on his left, Daru. Now he looks up, and, seeing the poet framed in the doorway, invites Goethe to approach. The Emperor is silent, amazed. There stands the sexagenarian, the most beautiful, the halest of old men, Goethe in the calm of his age, at the pinnacle of a strenuously wrought harmony of spirit, a harmony he had never possessed before and was so soon to lose. Napoleon is too full of admiration to speak. Then, more to himself than to his companions, he says:

“Voilà un homme!”

That is the golden shaft which pierces the heart and illuminates the scene: the word of a seer, deeply felt, an impression rather than a judgment—and it is meet that such it should be. For, precisely because the world ruler does not know that a world ruler is now before him, this utterance, the like of which he had never made to or of any one in the past and which he is never to make in the future, shows the godlike kinship of a genius with his brother genius. It is as if two elemental forces hovering on high had recognised each other through a rift in the clouds, and had, despite themselves, stretched out arms to one another until the tips of their forefingers had met; then the mists of time once more rose between them. A fleeting moment in the course of a thousand years; there has been nothing to compare with it since the meeting between Diogenes and Alexander.

Goethe’s discretion prevented him from recording the conversation for many a year, and even then the record was incomplete. Other memoirs provide us with fragments only.

Napoleon praises _Werther_, and adds: “I do not like the end of your romance.”

“I can well believe that, Sire. You would rather that a romance had no end.”

The Emperor calmly accepts this wellnigh threatening epigram. He then continues to criticise the story, saying that Werther’s love was not the only factor of the catastrophe, for ambition was likewise at work. The poet laughs (in two letters Goethe mentions this—a freedom rarely indulged in when the Emperor was present), and admits that the criticism is sound; but he adds that surely an artist may be forgiven for using an artifice which few readers will detect.

David. Louvre, Paris.

(Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.)]

The Emperor is well content with his little victory in the other man’s domain. Turning now to drama, he makes “very remarkable observations, like one who had studied tragedy with the closest attention, in the spirit of a judge presiding over a criminal trial, and of one who keenly regretted the departure of the French theatre from nature and truth.” He spoke unfavourably of the drama of destiny, saying that it was a relic of less enlightened days:

“What have we to do with destiny now! Politics are destiny!”

As he utters these words, he gives an object lesson in his own fashion, turning to Daru to discuss requisitions, and then speaking to Soult who has just entered. Turning back to Goethe, he manœuvres to get the poet to himself, and asks personal questions. Then he assumes the offensive:

“Does it please you here, Herr Goethe?”

But Goethe, too, knows how to seize political opportunities, and rejoins: “Very much; and I hope these days will also prove advantageous to our little country.”

“Is your people happy?” asks the Emperor, not noticing that he has phrased the question as if he were talking to a sovereign prince—for he must often have used such words in conversation with rulers. Really, he has no interest now in Saxony, and is thinking: “How can this man of genius be useful to me? What a pity he does not write history. But as a novelist he might describe this congress, or he might write a play.—He would certainly do either much better than our folk; and, besides, this would have redoubled value coming from a foreigner.” He therefore says:

“You would do well to stay here for the whole period of the conference, that you may write your impressions of this great drama. What does Herr Goethe think of the suggestion?”

Napoleon ends with this question (so unconsonant with his customary dictatorial manner) almost all his advances to the poet who is so hard to lure out of his reticence. Goethe says cautiously:

“I have not the pen of a classical author.”

“That’s in the political vein,” thinks the Emperor. But what he says is:

“Your duke has invited me to Weimar. For a time he was sulky, but now he is in a better humour.”

“If he was sulky, Sire, the punishment was certainly rather sharp; but perhaps I ought not to express an opinion on these matters. At any rate, we all owe him reverence.”

“Splendid!” thinks Napoleon. “He stands in front of his master, but lets me see he knows that the duke is a donkey. I must get this man to write my ‘Cæsar’ for me! The effect in France would be bigger than that of winning a battle!” His spoken words are:

“Tragedy should be the school of kings and peoples; there is no other field in which the poet can win such laurels. Why do you not write ‘Cæsar’s Death,’ more worthily, more splendidly than in Voltaire’s attempt? This might be the greatest work of your life. The aim of the tragedy would be to show how much happiness Cæsar would have conferred on the human race had he been given time to carry out his far-reaching plans. Come to Paris! I urge you to do so! Thence you will get a wider prospect of the world, and there you will find the most abundant materials for new imaginative creations.”

The poet expresses his thanks for the proposal, and says he would deem himself happy were it possible to accept.

“That is as far as I had better go,” thinks the Emperor, as he had thought recently in his dealings with the tsar; “if I am too insistent, he will fancy I have a strong interest in the matter. It is very strange! He wants nothing from me, not even to shine in my presence. What can charm him out of himself, this incorruptible man? He must come and see the plays we are presenting here; that will stimulate his ambition to write better ones.”

Out loud: “I hope you will come to the theatre this evening. You will find a lot of princes there. Do you know the prince-primate? You’ll see him in his box, fast asleep, with his head pillowed on the king of Württemberg’s shoulder. Do you know the tsar? You ought to dedicate something to him in honour of Erfurt!”

Thus the Emperor gives a third hint. Will Goethe take it? But the poet only smiles civilly, and candidly declares:

“I have never done anything of that sort, Sire, and therefore I have never had occasion to repent it.”

A touch! A touch! The Emperor of the French cannot but feel it! Marvellous to relate, the son of the revolution tries to strengthen his position by referring to the Roi Soleil:

“In the reign of Louis XIV., our great authors held other views!”

“No doubt they did, Sire; but we do not know whether they may not have repented.”

“How true!” is the Emperor’s thought when he hears this sceptical answer, which is really a skirmisher’s attack on the part of the German. Consequently, he makes no attempt to detain the poet when the latter, with a deprecatory gesture, himself closes the interview and bids the Emperor farewell—another breach of court traditions, with which Goethe is perfectly familiar.

Thus the amazing upshot of this uncanny conversation between the two men of genius is that the Emperor, to whom the duologue was merely interesting, had vainly solicited a favour of the poet to whom it was the greatest encounter in his life. The explanation is simple: The Emperor wanted to make use of the poet, whereas the poet did not need the Emperor. Napoleon wanted Goethe to write for him. But to Goethe, Napoleon’s actions were merely the precious material which enabled him to penetrate to the heart of the other’s genius; and he could do this without a journey to Paris.

Although the poet did not respond to the Emperor’s invitation by so much as a poetically worded compliment, years afterwards, in a tragical moment, Napoleon remembered the man whom, by three great words, he had set apart from all contemporaries.