Autobiography of Goethe by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620117354
Publisher: Duke Classics

PART THE SECOND

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OF WHAT ONE WISHES IN YOUTH, WHEN OLD HE HAS IN ABUNDANCE.

Sixth Book

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Thus I felt urged alternately to promote and to retard my recovery; and a certain secret chagrin was now added to my other sensations, for I plainly perceived that I was watched, that they were loath to hand me any sealed paper without taking notice what effect it produced, whether I kept it secret, whether I laid it down open and the like. I therefore conjectured that Pylades, or one of the cousins, or even Gretchen herself, might have attempted to write to me, either to give or to obtain information. In addition to my sorrow, I was now more cross than hitherto, and had again fresh opportunities to exercise my conjectures, and to mislead myself into the strangest combinations.

It was not long before they gave me a special overseer. Fortunately it was a man whom I loved and valued. He had held the place of tutor in the family of one of our friends, and his former pupil had gone alone to the university. He often visited me in my sad condition; and they at last found nothing more natural than to give him a chamber next to mine, as he was then to provide me with employment, pacify me, and, as I was well aware, keep his eye on me. Still, as I esteemed him from my heart, and had already confided many things to him, though not my affection for Gretchen, I determined so much the more to be perfectly candid and straightforward with him; as it was intolerable to me to live in daily intercourse with any one, and at the same time to stand on an uncertain, constrained footing with him. It was not long, then, before I spoke to him about the matter, refreshed myself by the relation and repetition of the minutest circumstances of my past happiness, and thus gained so much, that he, like a sensible man, saw it would be better to make me acquainted with the issue of the story, and that, too, in its details and particulars, so that I might be clear as to the whole, and that, with earnestness and zeal, I might be persuaded of the necessity of composing myself, throwing the past behind me, and beginning a new life. First he confided to me who the other young people of quality were who had allowed themselves to be seduced, at the outset, into daring hoaxes, then into sportive breaches of police, afterwards into frolicsome impositions on others, and other such dangerous matters. Thus actually had arisen a little conspiracy, which unprincipled men had joined, who, by forging papers and counterfeiting signatures, had perpetrated many criminal acts, and had still more criminal matters in preparation. The cousins, for whom I at last impatiently inquired, had been found to be quite innocent, only very generally acquainted with those others, and not at all implicated with them. My client, owing to my recommendation of

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