of delicate sentiments!  I have but one little objection to raise:  Theresa’s courageous and determined resistance to the person who wishes to rob her of her lover, even although the possibility is thereby reopened to her of possessing Lothar, is quite in accordance with nature, and is excellent; further, I think there are good reasons for Wilhelm’s showing deep indignation and a certain amount of pain at the banterings of his fellowmen and of fate—­but it seems to me that he ought to complain less deeply of the loss of a happiness which had already ceased to be anything of the kind to him.  In Natalie’s presence, as it seems to me, his regained freedom ought to be to him a greater happiness than he allows it to be.  I am quite aware of the complication of this state of things and what is demanded by delicatesse, but, on the other hand, Natalie may in some measure be said to be hurt by this same delicatesse when, in her presence, Wilhelm is allowed to lament over the loss of Theresa.

One other thing I specially admire in the concatenation of the events is the great good which you have contrived to draw from Wilhelm’s already-mentioned false relation to Theresa so as most speedily to bring about the true and desired end, the union of Natalie and Wilhelm.  In no other manner could this end have been arrived at so well and so naturally as by the path you have pursued, although this very path threatened to lead from it.  It can now be maintained, with the most perfect innocence and purity, that Wilhelm and Natalie belong to each other; and Theresa’s letters to Natalie lead up to this beautifully.  Such contrivances are of the greatest beauty, for they unite all that could be desired, nay, all that appeared wholly ununitable; they complicate, and yet carry the solution in themselves; they produce restlessness, and yet lead to repose; they succeed in reaching the goal, while appearing to be making every effort to keep from it.

Mignon’s death, although we are prepared for it, affects one powerfully and deeply—­so deeply, in fact, that many will think you quit the subject too abruptly.  This, upon first reading it, was a very decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may have, in this, gone a hair’s breadth too far.  Mignon, before her end, had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had likewise disappeared.  Her last song, especially, melts one’s heart to the most intense sympathy.  Hence it strikes one as odd that, directly upon the affecting scene of her death, the doctor should make an experiment upon her corpse, and that this living being should so soon be able to forget the person, merely in order to regard her as the instrument of a scientific inquiry.  It strikes one as being equally strange that Wilhelm—­who, after all, is the cause of her death, and is aware of it—­should at that moment notice the instrument-case and be lost in the recollection of past scenes, when the present should have so wholly absorbed him.