explanations; or she may cleave to her lover in the face of her
father's displeasure; or she may temporize in the hope of changing her
father's mind. What she actually does is to goad her lover into a
frenzy by her singular conduct and then come to her senses when it is
too late. The effect is to cast doubt upon the intensity of her
supposed passion for Ferdinand. One gets the impression that her
previous sentimental ecstasies were not perfectly genuine; that she
does not really know what it is to be in love, or how to speak the
veritable language of the heart.

The truth seems to be that when Schiller wrote 'Cabal and Love', he had
not progressed far enough in the knowledge of femininity to be able to
draw a perfectly life-like portrait of a girl in Louise's station. She
is a creature of the same order as Amalia and Leonora,--a sentimental
_Schwaermerin_, very much lacking in character and mother-wit. From the
first the expression of her love does not ring perfectly true. We
suspect her of phrase-making,--she is quite too ethereal and ecstatic
for a plain fiddler's daughter. No trace here of that homely poetic
realism,--Gretchen at the wash-tub, or Lotte cutting bread and
butter,--with which Goethe knew how to invest _his_ bourgeois maidens.
For aught we can learn from her discourse Schiller's Louise might be a
princess, brought up on a diet of Klopstock's odes. That a girl,
returning from church, should inquire of her parents if her lover has
called, is quite in order. That she should then confess that thoughts of
him have come between her and her Creator, is pardonable. But what are
we to think when she goes on to say to her own parents:

This little life of mine, oh that I might breathe it out into a soft
caressing zephyr to cool his face! This little flower of youth, were
it but a violet, that he might step on it, and it might die modestly