"I am contented and quiet; I
have half-a-dozen angels of girls whom I often see, though I have lost
my heart to none of them. They are pleasant creatures, and make my
life uncommonly agreeable. He who has seen no Leipzig might be very
well off here."[56] His life in Frankfort was, in short, what he
himself called it, an exile (_Verbannung_).
[Footnote 54: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i. 179, November 7th, 1768.]
[Footnote 55: _Ib._ p. 173.]
[Footnote 56: _Ib._ p. 217.]
Among his correspondents was Kaethchen Schoenkopf with whom, as we have
seen, he had come to what he thought a satisfactory arrangement before
leaving Leipzig. In this correspondence it is the Leipzig student, not
the associate of the Fraeulein von Klettenberg, who is before us. There
is the same waywardness, there are the same irresponsible sallies
which made him such a difficult lover. If we are to take him
seriously, he still suffered from the pangs of rejected love and
regretted that his former relations to Kaethchen had not continued. "A
lover to whom his love will not listen," he writes, "is by many
degrees not so unfortunate as one who has been cast off; the former
still retains hope and has at least no fear of being hated; the other,
yes, the other, who has once experienced what it is to be cast out of
a heart which once was his, gladly avoids thinking, not to say
speaking, of it.
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