Their
intercourse was resumed, but they avoided seeing each other alone, as
if conscious of some ground of mutual estrangement. "It was an
accursed state, in some ways resembling Hades, the meeting-place of
the sadly-happy dead." In view of these relations between Lili and
himself, he further adds, all their common friends were decidedly
opposed to their union.
Such is the account which, in his retrospect, Goethe gives of his
situation after his return to Frankfort, but his correspondence at the
time shows that it cannot be accepted as strictly accurate. During the
three remaining months he spent in Frankfort he on four different
occasions visited Offenbach, where he must often have seen her alone.
What his letters indeed prove is that he was characteristically
content to let each day bring its own happiness or misery, and to
leave events to decide the final issue. On August 1st, a few days
after his return, he writes to Knebel: "I am here again ... and find
myself a good deal better, quite content with the past and full of
hope for the future."[229] Two days later he was in Offenbach, and
from Lili's own room he writes as follows to the Countess: "Oh! that I
could tell you all.
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