As Friederike had fitted into the background of Goethe's Strassburg life, Lotte into that of Wetzlar, and Lili into the gaieties of Frankfort, so now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official, was the personification of the more aristocratic ideals of Weimar society.
The end of the period of mourning for the late king was the signal for a succession of gaieties, during which the queen displayed a passion for amusement and excitement which led to unfortunate results.
By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna.
On the evening of the gth of February 1567 Mary took an affectionate farewell of her husband, and went to attend some gaieties in Edinburgh.
He was not altogether without the young man's appetite for pleasure; yet when he was only nineteen we find him wondering, amid the gaieties of the carnival of 1817, how a gavotte or a minuet could make people forget that thirty thousand human beings around them had barely a morsel to eat.