Rome, for the winning over of a Protestant German prince. The story
begins in a promising way, and the later portions contain fine
passages of narrative and character-drawing. But its author presently
began to feel that it was unworthy of him and left it unfinished.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO SCHILLER (Berlin) _Sculptor, Reinhold
Begas_]

On the 22d of February, 1790, Schiller was married to Lotte von
Lengefeld, with whom he lived most happily the rest of his days. His
letters of this period tell of a quiet joy such as he had not known
before. And then, suddenly, his fair prospects were clouded by the
disastrous breakdown of his health. An attack of pneumonia in the
winter of 1790-1791 came near to a fatal ending, and hardly had he
recovered from that before he was prostrated by a second illness worse
than the first. He bade farewell to his friends, and the report went
abroad that he was dead. After a while he rallied, but never again to
be strong and well. From this time forth he must be thought of as a
semi-invalid, doomed to a very cautious mode of living and expectant
of an early death. It was to be a fourteen years' battle between a
heroic soul and an ailing body.

For a while, owing to the forced cessation of the literary work on
which his small income depended, he was in great distress for lack of
money. His wife, while of noble family, had brought nothing but
herself to the marriage partnership. And then, just as in the dark
days at Mannheim in 1784, help seemed to come from the clouds. Two
Danish noblemen, ardent admirers quite unknown to him personally,
heard of his painful situation and offered him a pension of a thousand
thalers a year for three years. No conditions whatever were attached