uest, went to await the approaching carriage at the house
door; the friend arrives and steps out of the carriage, deeply moved
and somewhat confused. Meanwhile the amiable lady of the house, of whom
in former days the new guest had been an admirer, also comes down the
stairs. The new-comer has already inquired after her with some
agitation, and seems extremely impatient to see her; now he catches
sight of her and shrinks back with emotion, then turns aside, and at
the same time throws his hat with vehemence behind him to the ground,
and staggers towards her. All this has been accompanied with such an
extraordinary expression of countenance, that the nerves of the
bystanders are shaken. The lady of the house goes towards her friend
with outspread arms; but he, instead of accepting her, seizes her hand
and bends over it so as to conceal his face; the lady leans over him
with a heavenly countenance, and says in a tone such as no Clairon or
Duebois could vie with, "Oh, yes; it is you--you are still my dear
friend!" The friend, roused by this touching voice, raises himself a
little, looks into the weeping eyes of his friend, and then again lets
his face sink down on her arm. None of the bystanders can refrain from
tears; they flow down the cheeks of even the unconcerned narrator, he
sobs, and is quite beside himself.[30] After this gushing feeling has
somewhat subsided, they all feel inexpressibly happy, often press each
other's hands, and declare these hours of companionship to be the most
charming of their life. And those who thus comported themselves were
men of well-balanced minds, who looked with contempt on the affectation
of the weak, who wept about nothing and made a vocation of their tears
and feelings, as did the hair-brained Leuchsenring.

But shortly after this, sentimental nature received a rude shock.
Goethe had represented in Werther, the sorrowful fate of a youth who
had perished in consequence of these moods; but had himself a far
nobler and more sound conception of sentiment than existed in his
contemporaries. His narrative was indeed a book for the moulding of
finer natures, through which their sentimentality was turned towards
the noble and poetic. Immense was the effect; tears flowed in streams;
the Werther dress became a favourite costume with sentimental
gentlemen, and Lotte the most renowned female character of that year.
That same year, 1774, a number of tender souls at Wetzlar, men in high
offices a