in
Frankfort he found himself in a very different society, and he as
promptly entered into the spirit of it. The circle of which he now
became a member was a company of religious persons, mostly women,
friends or acquaintances of his mother. Its most prominent member was
that Fraeulein von Klettenberg, already mentioned, a woman of high
rank, culture, and refinement. To moral beauty of character in man or
woman, Goethe, at all periods of his life, was peculiarly
sensitive,[51] and in the Fraeulein he saw a woman who combined at once
the most winning graces of her sex and the virtues of a saint. For
women of all ages and all types Goethe had always a singular
attraction, and, though the Fraeulein must have discerned that he could
never be a son or brother in the spirit, she was profoundly interested
in the wayward youth in whom she saw a brand that deserved to be
plucked from the burning.

[Footnote 51: _Cf._ his beautiful characterisation of Louis Bonaparte,
King of Holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the
Christian graces and of _reine Menschlichkeit_.]

With a kind of half consent Goethe entered into the spirit of the
pious circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy
memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut
Community to which Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with
the Fraeulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of
nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body. It
is with evident irony that Goethe relates how in his own case the
efficacy of these occult powers was tried. Among the members of the
religious community was a mysterious physician who was credited with
possessing certain medicines of peculiar virtue. He was believed to
have in store one drug--a powerful salt--which he reserved only for
the most dangerous cases, and regarding which, though they had never
seen the result of its operation, the community spoke with bated
breath. At the vehement request of his mother the mysterious medicine
was administered to Goethe at the crisis of his malady, at the hour of
midnight, and with all due solemnity. From that moment his illness
took a favourable turn, and he steadily progressed towards recovery.
"I need not say," is his comment, "how greatly this result
strengthened and heightened our faith in our physician and our efforts
to share such a treasure." Partly, therefore, out of his own
insatiable curiosit