He had no rival in his relations
to Friederike; in his relations to Lotte he had one. Shortly after
their first meeting he learned that Lotte was already betrothed,
though the fact was not known to the world. The successful wooer was
Johann Christian Kestner, a native of Hanover, and a Secretary of
Legation settled in Wetzlar. Kestner was at every point the antithesis
of his intruding rival. He was calm, deliberate, unimaginative, yet
conspicuously a man of insight and character, with a fund of good
sense and good temper, on which the situation made a large draft.
"Kestner must be a very good man," was the frequent remark of Merck's
wife in view of the relations of the three parties to each other, and
Kestner's own words prove it. It is in his Letters and Diary that we
have the closest glimpse of all three, and all that he says of
himself, of Lotte, and of Goethe, shows a tact and good feeling that
inspire esteem.
[Footnote 124: This is the expression of Kestner, Lotte's betrothed.]
After their first meeting at the ball, according to Goethe's own
testimony, he became Lotte's constant attendant. "Soon he could not
endure her absence.
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