At Karlsbad—there for the waters—he listened “with tears in his eyes” as Angelica Catalani sang “Kennst du das Land” at the home of Prince Josef Schwarzenberg, until her voice broke in a fit of jealousy. He wrote to his son, August, that the inhabitants now behaved like pirates toward visitors. “In any case, everything is much more expensive and becomes even more so with each passing day by reason of the exchange rates.” Approaching his sixty-ninth birthday, he felt the forces of his entelechy were now urging him toward “repeated puberty,” a long Indian summer. He wanted to celebrate alone, in solitude. Eduard Genast recounts: “Karl, Goethe’s faithful servant, was ordered on the morning of August 27 to bring up two bottles of red wine and place them on the two windowsills in front of him. After which Goethe begins pacing up and down the room, pausing at regular intervals, first at one window, then the other, emptying a glass each time. Some time later, Rehbein, who had traveled with him to Karlsbad, arrives.
GOETHE: What a dear friend you are! What’s the day today, what date is it?
REHBEIN: It’s August 27, Excellency.
GOETHE: No, it’s the twenty-eighth, it’s my birthday.
REHBEIN: But no, I’d never forget that; it’s the twenty-seventh.
GOETHE: You’re wrong. It’s the twenty-eighth.
REHBEIN firmly: The twenty-seventh.
GOETHE rings, enter Karl: What’s the date today?
KARL: Twenty-seventh, Excellency.
GOETHE: What the … Bring me the calendar!
Karl brings the calendar.
GOETHE after a long pause: Damnation! Then I’ve got myself drunk for nothing.”