"]
On Goethe's return to Frankfort sad news awaited him; during his
absence the Fraeulein von Klettenberg, whom he had left on her
sick-bed, had died. It was the severest personal loss he had yet
sustained by death. After his sister she had been the chief confidant
of all his troubles, his hopes, and ambitions, and he never left her
presence without feeling that for the time he had been lifted out of
himself. The relations between Goethe and her, indeed, show him in his
most attractive light. He had never disguised from her the fact that
he could not share the faith by which she lived; he was, as we have
seen, even in the habit of jesting at her most cherished beliefs; but
there was never a shade of alienation between them. "Bid him adieu,"
was her last message to him through his mother; "I have held him very
dear."[196] Take it as we may, it is the singular fact that by none
was Goethe regarded with more affectionate esteem than by the two
pious mystics, Jung Stilling and Fraeulein von Klettenberg.
[Footnote 196: _Ib._ p. 370.]
CHAPTER XIII
LILI SCHOeNEMANN
1775
To the year 1775 belongs the third critical period of Goethe's last
years in Frankfort.
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