died. Truly the King was preserved, and no particular injury to his body, but because of the fright and the great outcry he fell again into his former madness.”
42. So hear and see the fortune-freighted leaf.
Carnival and Allegory close together, and with this scene we return to Faust, and his experiences at the Court of the Emperor. As I have already remarked, the Emperor’s description of what he saw in the realm of fire does not at all harmonize with the Revolutionary solution, whence Düntzer, who holds fast to the latter, is obliged to surmise that Goethe must have forgotten the close of the foregoing scene when he wrote the commencement of this! I should much prefer to believe that Goethe allowed one part of his duplicate allegory to drop (its purpose having been fulfilled), and here introduces the Emperor’s vision as a further explanation of the other part,—a deceptive picture of the additional splendor and homage which shall follow the new financial scheme. Mephistopheles falls ironically into the same strain, and scoffs while he seems adroitly to flatter.
The paper-money device was probably suggested by the history of John Law’s operations in Paris, under the Orleans Regency,—from 1716 to 1720. It is also likely that Goethe remembered a passage in Pope’s epistle to Lord Bathurst (“On the Use of Riches”):—
“Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold imp’d by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o’er,
Or ship off senates to some distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl’s, scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes as the winds shall blow;
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a king or buys a queen.”
Eckermann writes, December 27, 1829: “After dinner, to-day, Goethe read to me the paper-money scene.
“‘You will remember,’ said he, ‘that at the Imperial Council the burden of the song is that money is lacking, and
