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to him, as he himself admits, and had mortified his vanity by betrothing herself to a less brilliant but more trustworthy lover, whom Goethe had introduced to her parents' house.
In freeing herself from Goethe's fascination Miss Schönkopf was probably aided by the difference in years between herself and the young poet. She was three years older than he. Perhaps the recollection of this just retribution nettled him and gave an additional stimulus to that yearning for woman's love which was natural in one of his years and warm temperament. Of his life in Strasburg at the period we are speaking of he wrote,—"I have never felt so powerfully as now, as here in Strasburg, what it is to be pleased without my heart participating in any way therein. An extended acquaintance among pleasant people, a wide awake cheerful society drives one day after the other past me, leaves me little time for thought and no rest for sentiment, and when we are without sentiment we certainly do not think of our friends. In a word, my present life is perfect as a sledge-drive, glittering and rattling, but as little for the heart as it is much for the eye and the ear."
In the month of October, 1770, a great change was destined to take place in Goethe's life. He was to have another affaire du coeur, in some respects the most important one in his life. None was so idyllic in its origin and progress, none so tragic in its termination. According to Mr. Lewes, in his "Biography of Goethe," (which, by the way, is even more highly esteemed on the continent than in England)—"Of all the women who enjoyed the distinction of Goethe's love none seem to me so fascinating as Frederika." The biographer is not alone in this opinion. The meeting of Goethe with the Maid of Sesenheim was brought about in the following way. Weyland, a fellow-student and a native of Northern Alsace, determined to take a holiday and visit some of his relatives and friends in the neighbourhood of Sesenheim. He invited Goethe to accompany him. The invitation was accepted. In Goethe's Autobiography, written more than forty years after the events we are about to allude to, the excursion is represented to have been made on horseback, but one of his biographers, Herr Viehoff, conjectures with much plausibility that in this as in some other respects the memory of the poet was at fault, and that the two students footed it to Sesenheim. In either case their road lay northward from Strasburg, close to the left bank of the Rhine; at about eighteen English miles from the city they would reach Drusenheim, a considerable village, which may be found on any large map of France in the northern part of the department of the Bas Rhin. About two and a-half miles north of Drusenheim and on the outskirts of the forest of Haguenau lies Sesenheim, then as now a mixed Protestant and Catholic village of about 500 souls, but owned at that time by the Prince de Rohan-Soubise, and still held by the descendants of that Prince's peasants. Notwithstanding the many social changes which have taken place in Alsace since 1770, the physical aspect of Sesenheim and the vicinity has not altered in any material degree. Sesenheim is one of the very numerous pleasant villages which dot the fertile, well-cultivated Alsatian plain. On the east the long line of poplar trees indicates the course of the Rhine. On the west stands a densely-wooded range of hills, studded at its base by more villages, beyond which range rises the imposing chain of the Vosges. On all sides the eye takes in detached villages, standing like islets on the broad hedgeless prairie, and the rural life of Alsace is purely a hamlet life, without isolated houses belonging to the gentry or tenant-farmers to connect one village with another and diversify the landscape.
As they approach Sesenheim Weyland points out the house of the Protestant pastor, which stood then, as the new parsonage stands now, opposite to the only, and that the Lutheran, church in Sesenheim.[1] The house has a tumbledown aspect. Weyland says to Goethe, "Do not let the ancient external appearance of the house shock you, you will find it only the more young within."
Let us stop at the threshold of the pastor's house and take a survey of the family within. Johann Jakob Brion, the pastor, was a zealous and dogmatical minister of the Gospel, aged fifty-three years. The leading idea of his life was to get the old parsonage rebuilt. He had procured some plans for the projected new house, which were laid before every visitor and tediously discussed. The charm of the house did not lie in this worthy but testy and commonplace functionary. It was the ladies of the humble establishment who invested it with that reputation for a genial and graceful hospitality to which Weyland had made allusion. Madame Maria Magdalena Brion (née Schoell) was a native of Strasburg, and she is described by Goethe as a lady of cultivated mind, and of manners at once elegant and dignified. She seems to have been a mother worthy of such a daughter as Frederika. The children of this couple were four in number; three daughters, Maria Salome (called by Goethe Olivia), Frederika, aged sixteen, and Sophie, aged ten years, and one- ↑ The Catholics, however, use it as well as the Protestants, by virtue of an old law of the time of Louis XIV., which allowed any six Catholics in an Alsatian village the privilege of using the choir of the Protestant church.