Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/258

234 signing that poetical love-letter, in which she had confessed a formal attachment to me, she had not given me a right to regard her as a sly and selfish coquette. Her masquerading it at the milliner's, too, no longer seemed to me so innocent; and I turned these annoying reflections over and over within myself until I had entirely stripped her of all her amiable qualities. My judgment was convinced, and I thought I must cast her away; but her image! — her image gave me the lie as often as it again hovered before me, which indeed happened often enough.

Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart: and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid? I really put on the man; and the first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I now regarded as childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the better! For I had often, half the night through, given myself up to this grief with the greatest violence; so that at last, from my tears and sobbing, I came to such a point that I could scarcely swallow any longer; eating and drinking became painful to me; and my chest, which was so nearly concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation I had constantly felt since the discovery made me banish every weakness. It seemed to me something frightful that I had sacrificed sleep, repose, and health for the sake of a girl who was pleased to consider me a babe, and to imagine herself, with respect to me, something very much like a nurse.

These depressing reflections, as I was soon convinced, were only to be banished by activity; but of what was I to take hold? I had, indeed, much to make up for in many things, and to prepare myself, in more than one sense, for the university, which I was now to attend; but I relished and accomplished nothing. Much appeared to me familiar and trivial: