Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/252

228 and think of every way to quiet me. They supposed that they could do it generally by the sacred assurance that all who were more or less involved in the guilt had been treated with the greatest forbearance; that my nearest friends, being as good as innocent, had been dismissed with a slight reprimand; and that Gretchen had retired from the city, and had returned to her own home. They lingered the most over this last point, and I did not take it in the best part; for I could discover in it, not a voluntary departure, but only a shameful banishment. My bodily and mental condition was not improved by this: my distress now only augmented; and I had time enough to torment myself by picturing the strangest romance of sad events, and an inevitably tragical catastrophe.