"I do not yet understand it myself," answered Dorothea; "I do not know how I am to relate it to you. That I was not happy, you must of course have seen, though I never said a word to you on the subject. Alas, the origin of that dates itself from my beloved father's death. You know I was scarcely thirteen years old when he died. O heaven, what a man! I could not at that time estimate his value, but the older I grew, the more he bloomed in my remembrance as the bright object of my love. That benign gentle spirit, that cheerfulness, humanity, quiet piety, that delight in nature and art, that active, admirable intellect--alas! and he was not happy either! I saw, I observed it well, when I came to distinguish a little, he was not happy in his marriage; he and my mother were too unlike one another, they were often at variance with each other. He was then at times deeply dejected, infinite sorrow would speak out of his fine dark eyes, as he bent them silently to the ground. And now on a sudden he was gone! He must have learnt and felt on the other side the grave how my heart's love followed him. O my friend, there are moments of pain, when nothing but the cold dull stupor into which our whole being sinks, rescues us from frenzy and madness. So I grew up in pain and regret, which no one shared, no one understood. And what an alteration took place in the life of our family! Instead of the cheerful conversations, instead of the lively parties, a serious solemn parade. My younger sisters were educated in a spirit quite opposite to that which my father had wished. Prayers, books of devotion, religious conversation, filled up the intervals of the day; and my heart grew more and more vacant; I could not sympathize in their devotion, could not even believe in its existence. My books, which were my father's presents too, I no longer ventured to shew; all was worldly and offensive. I was frightened at the constructions put on passages, which were my greatest favorites, which I knew by heart. Even Göthe's heavenly nature, his noble elevation, was seductive sensuality; and a refined prudery, which to me was in the highest degree disgusting, was to assume the name of virtue. My sisters, as they came to the age of reflexion, considered me as a degenerate creature, unsusceptible of any thing good; it was what they heard every hour, they could not help believing it. Between them and my mother there sprang a relation, which kept me at an equal distance from both parties, but for which I could not envy them; an overstrained love, a delicate tenderness, a soothing and fondling which often cut me to the heart; nay my mother went so far as to idolize her younger daughters, to adore them, and to tell them she did so. My sisters treated my mother nearly in the way that one would hold intercourse with a departed saint, if she were to return to us; but this was what I could not carry on for above a day; I was then under