would not desire to have spent my days
better than I did at Wetzlar, but God send me no more such days!...
This I have just said to Lotte's silhouette." In the beginning of
November he paid a flying visit to Wetzlar, and apparently had reason
to regret it. "Certainly, Kestner," he wrote the day after he left,
"it was time that I should go; yesterday evening, as I sat on the
sofa, I had thoughts for which I deserve hanging." On Christmas Day he
writes still at the same high pitch: "It is still night, dear Kestner,
and I have risen to write again by the morning light, which recalls
pleasant memories of past days.... Immediately on my arrival here I
had pinned up Lotte's silhouette; while I was in Darmstadt, they
placed my bed here, and there to my great joy hangs Lotte's picture at
its head." In April, 1773, Kestner and Lotte were married, and Goethe
insisted, against Kestner's wish, on sending the bride her
marriage-ring, which was accompanied by the following note: "May the
remembrance of me as of this ring be ever with you in your happiness.
Dear Lotte, after a long interval we shall see each other again, you
with the ring on your finger, and me always _yours_. I affix no name
nor surname. You know well who writes." A few days later we have the
following words in a letter to Kestner: "To part from Lotte, I do not
yet understand how it was possible.... It cost me little, and yet I
don't understand how it was possible. There is the rub." In the course
of the summer Kestner removed to Hanover, where he had received an
official appointment, and took his wife with him. The correspondence
then became less frequent, though on both sides it was maintained in
the same friendly spirit. Only for a time, on the publication of
_Werther_, as we shall see, was there the shadow of possible
estrangement. "Alienated lovers," is Goethe's remark, already quoted,
"become the best friends, if only they can be properly managed"; and
Goethe showed himself an adept in this art of management.

While Goethe was pouring forth his confessions to Kestner and Lotte,
his circumstances at home were not such as to conduce to calm of mind.
Frankfort remained as distasteful to him as ever. "The Frankforters,"
he wrote to Kestner, "are an accursed folk; they are so pig-headed
that nothing can be made of them." With his father his relations had
not become more cordial after his return from Wetzlar. "Lieber Gott,"
he wrote on receiving a letter from his fat