To Rev. Convers Francis.
Mr. Brisbane, the Fourier Association man, told me that he was well acquainted with Bettine in Germany, and that no one who knew her would doubt for a moment that she did all the strange things recorded in her letters. He said she would talk with him by the two hours together, lying all quirled up in a heap on the carpet, and as often as any way with her feet bare; but that this, and other tricks more odd still, were played with such innocent and infantile grace that, withered as she was, he could not help regarding her like a child three years old. Yet, in the midst of her wildest frolics, she would start off suddenly and wing the highest flights of poetic romance, or dive into the deepest vein of spiritual philosophy. The artists were plagued to death with her, for she would go into all their studios just when she chose, seize their clay, tools, or brushes, and model or paint to her heart's content; often leaving her work unfinished and seizing upon fresh clay or canvas to embody some new freak of her brain. Some of these productions, he said, were of exquisite grace and beauty. Altogether, she was the strangest yet, the most captivating mortal he ever met. She had a son twenty years old, a man observable for practical wisdom and business tact. She was then a little withered, odd-looking old woman; but with a fire in her dark eye easily kindled into brilliant beauty.
As for conventional forms, the giant soul should indeed rend them like cobwebs when they cross the pathway of Truth and Freedom. But there is an eternal distinction between right and wrong, Goethe end Bettine to the contrary notwithstanding.
