Through his intercourse with Gretchen's intimates he was led to
recommend one of them for a municipal post in Frankfort--a post which
he did not hold long before he was found guilty of embezzlement and
defalcation. The discovery was disastrous to Goethe's relations with
Gretchen, and the disaster involved an experience of conflicting
emotions which produced a crisis in his inner life. He had been rudely
awakened to mistrust of mankind, and it was an awakening which, as he
has himself emphasised, influenced all his thinking and feeling for
many years to come. He had lived in a dream of phantasy and passion,
and he learned to the shock of his whole nature that the object of his
dreams had never at any moment regarded him otherwise than as an
interesting boy whose talents and connections made him a desirable
acquaintance. In the strained and morbid condition of his body and
mind, which was the result of his disillusion, we see an experience
which was often to be repeated in his maturer years, and which points
to elements in his nature which were ever ready to pass beyond his
control. As in the case of all his subsequent experiences of the same
nature, he finally regained self-mastery, but a revolution had been
accomplished in him as the result of the struggle.
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