during their few days' intercourse, which as a characterisation comes
next in interest to that of Kestner already quoted. "From Wieland," he
writes, "you will have been able to learn that I have made the
acquaintance of Goethe, and that I think somewhat enthusiastically of
him. I cannot help myself, but I swear to you that all of you, all
who have heads and hearts, would think of him as I do if you came to
know him. He will always remain to me one of the most extraordinary
apparitions of my life. Perhaps the novelty of the impression has
struck me overmuch, but how can I help it if natural causes produce
natural workings in me?... Goethe lives in a state of constant inward
war and tumult, since on every subject he feels with the extreme of
vehemence. It is a need of his spirit to make enemies with whom he can
contend; moreover, it is not the most contemptible adversaries he will
single out. He has spoken to me of all those whom he has attacked with
special and genuinely felt esteem. But the fellow delights in battle;
he has the spirit of an athlete. As he is probably the most singular
being who ever existed, he began as follows one evening in Mainz in
quite melancholy tones: 'I am now good friends again with
everybody--with the Jacobis, with Wieland; and this is not as it
should be with me. It is the condition of my being that, as I must
have something which for the time being is for me the ideal of the
excellent, so also I must have an ideal against which I can direct my
wrath.'"[195]

[Footnote 195: Max Morris, _op. cit._ iv. 370-1. About the same date
as Knebel's letter, Goethe wrote to Sophie von la Roche: "Das ist was
Verfluchtes dass ich anfange mich mit niemand mehr misszuverstehen."
In his 49th year Goethe said of himself: "Opposition ist mir immer
noetig."]

On Goethe's return to Frankfort sad news awaited him; during his
absence the Fraeulein von Klettenberg, whom he had left on her
sick-bed, had died. It was the severest personal loss he had yet
sustained by death. After his sister she had been the chief confidant
of all his troubles, his hopes, and ambitions, and he never left her
presence without feeling that for the time he had been lifted out of
himself. The relations between Goethe and her, indeed, show him in his
most attractive light. He had never disguised from her the fact that
he could not share the faith by which she lived; he was, as we have
seen, even in the habit of jesting at her most cherish