o discover and attach to himself
amid the distracting frivolities of every society he frequented.[122]

[Footnote 120: In the _Kronprinz_, the principal hotel in the town.]

[Footnote 121: Goethe's own lodging (still shown) was in the
_Gewandsgasse_, a narrow, dirty street, whence sun or moon could be
seen at no season of the year.]

[Footnote 122: In his contemporary letters, Goethe does not always
speak of Gotter so favourably as he does in his Autobiography.]

"What happened to me in Wetzlar," Goethe writes in his Autobiography,
"is of no great significance." But posterity has thought differently,
and, if we are to judge by the consequences of what, happened to him
in Wetzlar, both for himself and for the world, posterity is
right.[123] Be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first
hand leaves us in no doubt that, but for his Wetzlar experience, one
of the most remarkable phases in Goethe's development would not have
found expression, and one resounding note in European literature would
have been unheard.

[Footnote 123: An exhaustive account of Goethe's sojourn in Wetzlar
will be found in W. Herbst's _Goethe in Wetzlar_, 1772. _Vier Monate
aus des Dichters Jugendleben_, Gotha, 1881.]

In Leipzig and Strassburg Goethe had found objects to engage his
affections, and he was not to be without a similar experience in
Wetzlar. During his first weeks there he had seen no maiden to
interest him, and the fact may explain his dissatisfaction during that
period. After leaving in succession the circles of Sesenheim,
Frankfort, and Darmstadt, he tells us, he felt a void in his heart
which he could not fill. An accident at length came to fill the void.
On June 9th (the date is carefully recorded) he met a girl at a ball
in a neighbouring village (Garbenheim), who "made a complete conquest
of him."[124] Her name was Charlotte Buff, the second daughter of an
official of the Teutonic Order--a widower with twelve children.
Charlotte, or Lotte, as he calls her, was of a different type from any
of his previous loves, so that she possessed all the freshness of
novelty. Though only nineteen, she had taken upon her the care of the
numerous household, and discharged her duties with a motherly tact and
good sense which excited general admiration. Over Lotte's personal
appearance Goethe is not rapturous as in the case of Friederike; he
simply says that she had a light and graceful figure, and in the same
cool tone remarks that