He reached Vienna. There he was loaded with honours and
presents: other cities were awaiting him. Goethe, then nineteen
years old, studying art at Leipsic, was expecting his coming, with
that wistful eagerness which marked his youth, when the news
[196] of Winckelmann's murder arrived. All his "weariness of
the North" had revived with double force. He left Vienna,
intending to hasten back to Rome, and at Trieste a delay of a few
days occurred. With characteristic openness, Winckelmann had
confided his plans to a fellow-traveller, a man named Arcangeli,
and had shown him the gold medals received at Vienna.
Arcangeli's avarice was aroused. One morning he entered
Winckelmann's room, under pretence of taking leave.
Winckelmann was then writing "memoranda for the future editor
of the History of Art," still seeking the perfection of his great
work. Arcangeli begged to see the medals once more. As
Winckelmann stooped down to take them from the chest, a cord
was thrown round his neck. Some time afterwards, a child with
whose companionship Winckelmann had beguiled his delay,
knocked at the door, and receiving no answer, gave the alarm.
Winckelmann was found dangerously wounded, and died a few
hours later, after receiving the last sacraments. It seemed as if the
gods, in reward for his devotion to them, had given him a death
which, for its swiftness and its opportunity, he might well have
desired. "He has," says Goethe, "the advantage of figuring in the
memory of posterity, as one eternally able and strong; for the
image in which one leaves the world is that in which one moves
among the shadows.
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