Then befalls the incident which also befell Goethe: he meets
a girl at a ball, and he is overmastered by a passion which changes
the current of his life and paralyses every other motive at its
source. At the first meeting Werther learns that Charlotte is
betrothed,[155] but her betrothed is absent, and, oblivious of the
future, he for a few weeks lives in a state of intoxicating bliss.
Albert, who, like Charlotte, has in the first part all the
characteristics of his original, at length appears on the scene, and
all three are gradually convinced that the situation is intolerable.
There are "painful scenes," such as, according to Kestner, actually
happened in Goethe's own case; and after an agonising struggle with
himself Werther succeeds in breaking away from the enchanted spot, the
last conversation between the three turning on the prospect of a
future life--a memory, as we have seen, of an actual talk between
Lotte, Kestner, and Goethe. So ends the first part, which, with
unimportant variations, is a close record of the circumstances of
Goethe's own sojourn in Wetzlar.
[Footnote 155: It was shortly after his meeting with Lotte Buff that
Goethe learned that she was engaged to Kestner.
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