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finally became mistrustful in consequence of the very great trouble he gave himself to see and snatch my letters. He had in the meantime in his usual manner become enamoured of the girl, because he thought that was the only way to get at her secrets, and as she, now warned and reserved, declined his visits and withheld herself more, he resorted to the most ridiculous demonstrations of suicide, so that he was looked upon as half mad and sent back to Strasburg."
Goethe, the man of the world, after obtaining this "reconciliation" on certainly very easy terms, never saw Frederika again, and never concerned himself about her fate. Neither incentives nor opportunities were wanting to interest and inform himself about the destiny of the Brion family. Troublous times visited France. In the service of the Duke of Weimar, Goethe accompanied the Prussian army which invaded France in 1792. He was frequently on the Rhine between 1792 and 1797. In 1814 and again in 1815 he took a summer tour through Rhenish Germany. As a man of letters he was, indeed, less neglectful. In his Autobiography he raises a monument to Frederika which interested the whole German people, and through them the civilised world, in her history, and made Sesenheim a sanctuary visited by pilgrims of all nations. This last literary atonement indirectly rescued the after history of the Brion family from oblivion.
The first break in the family circle was the death of Madame Brion. Her horizontal tombstone still lies at the foot of her husband's, close to the eastern wall of the Sesenheim church. The epitaph has been worn out by the feet of sportive children. The old man died in 1787, aged seventy years and six months. His epitaph is still legible, but will not be so for long. It is to be hoped that the present incumbent will preserve a true copy of it before it is obliterated. The elder sister married a Protestant minister named Marx, whose parish was in Meissenheim, in Baden. She died in the middle term of life, leaving an only daughter to Frederika's care. Christian, the brother, became a Lutheran minister, and died at Barr, near Strasburg, in 1817. The fate of the two younger sisters, Frederika and Sophie, after the break up of their home at Sesenheim, was a chequered one. They went to live at Rothau in the department of the Vosges, where they set up a small trade in articles of female and children's attire, and, at the same time, boarded and lodged some young girls from Alsace, who were sent to the western side of the Vosges to learn French. In 1794 we hear of Frederika petitioning the local Committee of Public Safety to release from imprisonment a certain innocuous baker, of whose "civism" she gave satisfactory proof. There is a joint letter of Sophie's and Frederika's still extant in the hands of M. Lucius, the present Lutheran pastor of Sesenheim, which is directed to the father of one of the young ladies whose education she superintended. Sophie's communication comes first and is followed by Frederika's. The latter gives thanks for Christmas presents received, and speaks of the progress of the donor's daughter and the hold she has obtained on Frederika's heart. A facsimile of Frederika's communication is given at the close of M. Albert Grün's drama of "Frederika."[1] The letter was written in December, 1798, but is dated according to the Republican Calendar then in use in France. From Rothau she removed to Meissenheim, near Offenburg, in Baden, where her elder sister lived. She brought up Marie's only child, and lived to see her married. After the wedding she said to Sophie, "I feel that I shall not live much longer. My time of rest is come. Do, dear sister, remain with me. I feel so lonely." Sophie remained. Frederika's presentiment was correct. She only survived the wedding six weeks. The date of her death was November 1813, in her fifty-ninth year. It was in 1811 and 1812 that Goethe composed those portions of the Autobiography which were to render her famous. One would like to know whether she read this work, but tradition is silent upon this point. Sophie survived her sister for a quarter of a century, and Goethe for nearly seven years. She died, much esteemed, at Niederbronn (in Northern Alsace, not far from Sesenheim) in December, 1838. She burnt Goethe's letters to Frederika during the Strasburg period (about thirty in number) "because they enraged her." She preserved for many years the original copies of Goethe's Sesenheim songs and of his first translations of Ossian. Finally they were borrowed from her and not returned, but she had taken the precaution to keep copies of the same. Sophie even outlived the old parsonage, which was not taken down and replaced by the existing handsome dwelling until 1834.
The first pilgrim to Sesenheim was Herr Näke, Professor of Philology in one of the Gymnasia of Rhenish Germany, who wended his way thither in 1822 and published an account of his visit. Ever since then the locality has annually attracted to its pleasant precincts a not very numerous but a select and appreciative cortége of tourists, of course chiefly Germans. The same little inn (the "Golden Anchor") that existed in Goethe's time is still the sole hostelry in Sesenheim. The barn and- ↑ Strasburg, Trottel & Würtz, 1859.