..."]
With Frau von la Roche Goethe established a Platonic relation which he
assiduously cultivated during the remainder of his residence in
Frankfort, but there was another member of the household to whom he
was attracted by a livelier feeling. This was the elder of the two
daughters, Maximiliane by name, a girl of seventeen, whose charms were
subsequently to be given to the lady of Werther's infatuation. From
what we have seen of Goethe's inflammability, we are prepared for the
naive remark in which he records his new sensation. "It is a very
pleasant sensation," he says, "when a new passion begins to stir in us
before the old one is quite extinct. So, as the sun sets, we gladly
behold the moon rise on the opposite horizon, and rejoice in the
double splendour of the two heavenly lights." Be it said that the
atmosphere of the household was provocative of relaxed feelings.
Goethe was not the only guest. Besides Merck there was a youth named
Leuchsenring whose special line of activity had endeared him to a wide
circle. Leuchsenring made it his business to enter into correspondence
with susceptible souls whose effusions he carried about with him in
dispatch-boxes and was in the habit of reading aloud to sympathetic
listeners.
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