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 whose friendship
Winckelmann had made to beguile the delay, knocked at the door, and
receiving no answer, gave an alarm. Winckelmann was found dangerously
wounded, and died a few hours later, after receiving the sacraments of
the Romish Church. 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." Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret
that the meeting with Goethe did not take place. Goethe, then in all the
pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still unruffled by the press and storm
of his earlier manhood, was awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the
worthiest kind.
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