Now, between ourselves, let us admit that a young girl who should make herself the handmaid of a man of genius, his equal through comprehension, and should piously worship him till death, like one of those divine figures sketched by the masters on the shutters of their mystic shrines, and who, when Germany lost him, should have retired to some solitude away from men, like the friend of Lord Bolingbroke,--let us admit, I say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of our Lord.

If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the picture?
As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult.

Neither am I disposed to be a martyr.

I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am still young and I have my career to make.

See me for what I am.
The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me sufficient means of living.