'Under these circumstances, Schiller, perfectly secure, visited Ludwigsburg and even Solitüde, without, as he himself expressed it, asking permission of the "Schwabenkönig." And, in September, in the near prospect of his Wife's confinement, he went altogether to Ludwigsburg, where he was a good deal nearer to his kindred; and moreover, in the clever Court-Doctor von Hoven, a friend of his youth, hoped to find counsel, help and enjoyment. Soon after his removal, Schiller had, in the birth of his eldest Son, Karl, the sweet happiness of first paternal joy; and with delight saw fulfilled what he had written to a friend shortly before his departure from Jena: "I shall taste the joys of a Son and of a Father, and it will, between these two feelings of Nature, go right well with me."
'The Duke, ill of gout, and perhaps feeling that death was nigh, seemed to make a point of strictly ignoring Schiller; and laid not the least hindrance in his way. On the contrary, he granted Schiller Senior, on petition, the permission to make use of a certain Bath as long as he liked; and this Bath lay so near Ludwigsburg that he could not but think the meaning merely was, that the Father wished to be nearer his Son. Absence was at once granted by the Duke, useful and necessary as the elder Schiller always was to him at home. For the old man, now Major Schiller, still carried on his overseeing of the Ducal Gardens and Nurseries at Solitüde, and his punctual diligence, fidelity, intelligence and other excellences in that function had long been recognised.
'In a few weeks after, 24th October 1793, Duke Karl died; and was, by his illustrious Pupil, regarded as in some sort a paternal friend. Schiller thought only of the great qualities of the deceased, and of the good he had done him; not of the great faults which as Sovereign, and as man, he had manifested. Only to his most familiar friend did he write: "The death of old Herod has had no influence either on me or my Family,--except indeed that all men who had immediately to do with that Sovereign Herr, as my Father had, are glad now to have the prospect of a man before them. That the new Duke is, in every good, and also in every bad meaning of the word." Withal, however, his Father, to whom naturally the favour of the new Duke, Ludwig Eugen, was of importance, could not persuade Schiller to welcome him to the Sovereignty with a poem. To Schiller's feelings it was unendurable to awaken, for the sake of an external advantage from the new Lord, any suspicions as if he welcomed the death of the old.'[55]