Lotte
Buff's eyes were brown.]
In the opening of the second part the character of Werther is further
revealed in a new set of circumstances. Against his own inclinations
he accepts an official appointment under an ambassador at a petty
German Court, and his helpless unfitness in this situation for the
ordinary business of life may be regarded as a commentary on Goethe's
own invincible distaste for the practice of his profession. Werther
finds the ambassador intolerable; and a public insult to which, as a
commoner, he is subjected at a social gathering of petty nobility,
drives him to resign his post. After a few months' residence with a
prince, whose company in the end he finds uncongenial, he is
irresistibly drawn to the scenes of his former happiness and misery.
But in the interval an event happens which makes the renewal of old
relations impossible. Charlotte and Albert have married, and the sight
of Albert enjoying the privileges of a husband is a constant reminder
of the hopelessness of his passion. Blank despair gradually takes
possession of Werther's soul; in the hopeless wail of Ossian he finds
the only adequate expression of his fate.
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