[Footnote 194: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 46.]
In the following month (December) Goethe received still another
visit--a visit which was directly to lead to the most decisive event
in his life. As he was sitting one evening in his own room, a stranger
was ushered in, whom in the dusk he mistook for Fritz Jacobi. The
stranger was Major von Knebel, who had served in the Prussian army,
but was now on a tour with the young princes of Weimar, Carl August
and Constantin, to the latter of whom he was acting as tutor. Knebel
was keenly interested in literature, was a poet himself, and an ardent
admirer of Goethe. There followed congenial talk which was to be the
beginning of a friendship that, unlike most of Goethe's youthful
friendships, was to endure into the old age of both. But Knebel had
come on a special errand; the young princes had expressed the desire
to become acquainted with the man who had made merry with their
instructor Wieland, and whose name was in all men's mouths as the
author of the recently published _Werther_. Nothing loth, Goethe
accompanied Knebel to the princes, and in the interviews that followed
he displayed all the tact that characterised his subsequent
intercourse with the great.
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