Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 6.djvu/176

150 your wishes, and the warmth and sweetness with which you express them, have not left me untouched, have not left me unmoved. You drive me to make a confession: unill now I, too, have had a concealment from you; I am in exactly the same position with you, and I have hitherto been putting the same restraint on my inclination which I have been exhorting you to put on yours."

"Glad am I to hear that," said Edward. "In the married state, a difference of opinion now and then, I see, is no bad thing. We learn something of one another by it."

"You are to learn at present, then," said Charlotte, "that I feel with regard to Ottilie as you do with regard to the captain. The dear child is most uncomfortable at the school, and I am thoroughly uneasy about her. Luciana, my daughter, born as she is for the world, is there training hourly for the world: languages, history, everything that is taught there, she acquires with so much ease, that, as it were, she learns them off at sight. She has quick natural gifts, and an excellent memory: one may almost say she forgets everything, and in a moment calls it all back again. She distinguishes herself above every one at the school with the freedom of her carriage, the grace of her movement, and the elegance of her address, and, with the inborn royalty of nature, makes herself the queen of the little circle there. The superior of the establishment regards her as a little divinity, who under her hands is shaping into excellence, and who will do her honour, gain her reputation, and bring her a large increase of pupils: the first pages of this good lady's letters, and her monthly notices of progress, are for ever hymns about the excellence of such a child, which I have to translate into my own prose: while her concluding sentences about Ottilie are nothing but excuse after excuse,—attempts at explaining how it can be that a