The relation was a most difficult one, and made Goethe restless and unhappy. At last the strain became intolerable, and he resolved to save himself by flight. On the 10th of September, having dined with Kestner in a public garden, Goethe spent the evening with the lovers in Lotte’s home; and, as it happened, the talk became unusually sombre, Lotte herself giving it a serious turn by a reference to the invisible world. On returning to his rooms he wrote farewell letters, adding next morning a line for Lotte alone. “Be ever of cheerful mood, dear Lotte,” he wrote,--“you are happier than a hundred--only not indifferent! And I, dear Lotte, am happy that I read in your eyes that you believe I shall never change. Adieu, a thousand times adieu!” On the same morning he quitted Wetzlar, haunted by the thought of her, but with the feeling that he was escaping from a grave and imminent peril. At Darmstadt Goethe had met Frau von Laroche, who had made some reputation as the author of a recently-published romance, “Die Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim.” She was the wife of a high official at the Electoral Court of Trier, and her home was on the outskirts of a beautiful village that nestled at the foot of Ehrenbreitstein. In response, no doubt, to an invitation to visit her, Goethe now made his way slowly down the Lahn towards the Rhine, finding in communion with nature some relief from the depression that had succeeded the excitement of the previous weeks. During his stay at the house of Frau von Laroche several guests arrived--among them, Merck with his wife and little boy. Goethe thoroughly enjoyed his visit, opening his heart and imagination to all the impressions produced on him by free, joyous intercourse with friends, and by the lovely scenery of the Rhine country. Frau von Laroche, by whom he had not been strongly attracted at Darmstadt, won his confidence and affection; and he had many a pleasant talk with the eldest of her two daughters, Maximiliane, a girl of about seventeen, whose fine dark eyes and frank, pretty ways might have created for him a new danger but for the power that had so completely subdued him at Wetzlar. Before the end of September he was back at Frankfort, and in the course of a few weeks he was again engaged in professional business, to which he continued to give some attention during the whole of the remaining time spent in his father’s house. But he was firmly resolved that his real work should be literature, and now so much had happened to deepen his feeling and quicken his imagination that the difficulty was, not how to find something to say, but how to give expression to even a small proportion of the thoughts that pressed upon him for utterance.