As he approached the inn, in front of which the whole village was assembled, screams were suddenly heard.  A troop of armed peasants was seen approaching, and every one exclaimed that the criminal had been apprehended.  Werther looked, and was not long in doubt.  The prisoner was no other than the servant, who had been formerly so attached to the widow, and whom he had met prowling about, with that suppressed anger and ill-concealed despair, which we have before described.

“What have you done, unfortunate man?” inquired Werther, as he advanced toward the prisoner.  The latter turned his eyes upon him in silence, and then replied with perfect composure; “No one will now marry her, and she will marry no one.”  The prisoner was taken into the inn, and Werther left the place.  The mind of Werther was fearfully excited by this shocking occurrence.  He ceased, however, to be oppressed by his usual feeling of melancholy, moroseness, and indifference to everything that passed around him.  He entertained a strong degree of pity for the prisoner, and was seized with an indescribable anxiety to save him from his impending fate.  He considered him so unfortunate, he deemed his crime so excusable, and thought his own condition so nearly similar, that he felt convinced he could make every one else view the matter in the light in which he saw it himself.  He now became anxious to undertake his defence, and commenced composing an eloquent speech for the occasion; and, on his way to the hunting-lodge, he could not refrain from speaking aloud the statement which he resolved to make to the judge.

Upon his arrival, he found Albert had been before him:  and he was a little perplexed by this meeting; but he soon recovered himself, and expressed his opinion with much warmth to the judge.  The latter shook, his head doubtingly; and although Werther urged his case with the utmost zeal, feeling, and determination in defence of his client, yet, as we may easily suppose, the judge was not much influenced by his appeal.  On the contrary, he interrupted him in his address, reasoned with him seriously, and even administered a rebuke to him for becoming the advocate of a murderer.  He demonstrated, that, according to this precedent, every law might be violated, and the public security utterly destroyed.  He added, moreover, that in such a case he could himself do nothing, without incurring the greatest responsibility; that everything must follow in the usual course, and pursue the ordinary channel.

Werther, however, did not abandon his enterprise, and even besought the judge to connive at the flight of the prisoner.  But this proposal was peremptorily rejected.  Albert, who had taken some part in the discussion, coincided in opinion with the judge.  At this Werther became enraged, and took his leave in great anger, after the judge had more than once assured him that the prisoner could not be saved.

The excess of his grief at this assurance may be inferred from a note we have found amongst his papers, and which was doubtless written upon this very occasion.