are spent as Goethe spent them--in daydreaming and vague
longings; finding distraction alternately in sketching, in reading
Homer, in intercourse with children and simple people, in
contemplations on nature and the life of man, inspired by Spinoza and
Rousseau. Then befalls the incident which also befell Goethe: he meets
a girl at a ball, and he is overmastered by a passion which changes
the current of his life and paralyses every other motive at its
source. At the first meeting Werther learns that Charlotte is
betrothed,[155] but her betrothed is absent, and, oblivious of the
future, he for a few weeks lives in a state of intoxicating bliss.
Albert, who, like Charlotte, has in the first part all the
characteristics of his original, at length appears on the scene, and
all three are gradually convinced that the situation is intolerable.
There are "painful scenes," such as, according to Kestner, actually
happened in Goethe's own case; and after an agonising struggle with
himself Werther succeeds in breaking away from the enchanted spot, the
last conversation between the three turning on the prospect of a
future life--a memory, as we have seen, of an actual talk between
Lotte, Kestner, and Goethe. So ends the first part, which, with
unimportant variations, is a close record of the circumstances of
Goethe's own sojourn in Wetzlar.

[Footnote 155: It was shortly after his meeting with Lotte Buff that
Goethe learned that she was engaged to Kestner.]

A tragic end to _Werther_ Goethe had before him from its first
conception, as is proved by his eagerness to ascertain the details of
Jerusalem's suicide. But to justify dramatically such an end to his
hero, certain modifications in the relations of all the three
characters were rendered necessary, and again his own experience
suggested the mode of treatment. In the uncomfortable relations that
had arisen between himself and the Brentanos, husband and wife, he
found a situation which would naturally involve a catastrophe in the
case of a character constituted like Werther. When in February, 1774,
therefore, he sat down to complete the tale of Werther's woes, it was
under a new inspiration that the characters of Albert and Charlotte
fashioned themselves in his mind. Not Kestner and Lotte Buff, but the
Brentanos, suggested their leading traits as well as the relations of
all parties, which involved the closing tragedy. Albert becomes a
jealous and somewhat morose husband, and Cha