The victim on whom Pater Brey plies his arts is Caroline Flachsland,
who appears under the name of Leonora, and the injured lover is Herder
(Captain Velandrino).[138] The Captain, who has been informed of Pater
Brey's philanderings with his betrothed, appears on the scene, is
assured of her faithfulness, and in concert with another character in
the piece (Merck) plays a coarse trick on the Pater which makes him
the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood.
[Footnote 137: A quarrel had arisen between Merck and Leuchsenring,
and Goethe had warmly taken Merck's side.]
[Footnote 138: As we have seen, Herder was jealous of Goethe's own
attentions to Caroline.]
Herder had good reason to resent the licence with which his private
affairs had been obtruded on the public in _Pater Brey_,[139] but in
the same year Goethe made him the main subject of another production
which raises equally our astonishment at the manners of the time and
at the wanton audacity of its author. In _Pater Brey_ the prevailing
sentimentalism, as veiling dubious motives, had been the theme of
ridicule; in _Satyros, oder der vergoetterte Waldteufel_, it was the
extravagancies of the followers of Rousseau in their idealisation of
the natural man.
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