The correspondence then became less frequent, though on both sides it was maintained in the same friendly spirit. Only for a time, on the publication of _Werther_, as we shall see, was there the shadow of possible estrangement. "Alienated lovers," is Goethe's remark, already quoted, "become the best friends, if only they can be properly managed"; and Goethe showed himself an adept in this art of management. While Goethe was pouring forth his confessions to Kestner and Lotte, his circumstances at home were not such as to conduce to calm of mind. Frankfort remained as distasteful to him as ever. "The Frankforters," he wrote to Kestner, "are an accursed folk; they are so pig-headed that nothing can be made of them." With his father his relations had not become more cordial after his return from Wetzlar. "Lieber Gott," he wrote on receiving a letter from his father, "shall I then also become like this when I am old? Shall my soul no longer attach itself to what is good and amiable? Strange the belief that the older a man becomes, the freer he becomes from what is worldly and petty. He becomes increasingly more worldly and petty."[130] His father's insistence on his attention to legal business was a permanent cause of mutual misunderstanding. "I let my father do as he pleases; he daily seeks to enmesh me more and more in the affairs of the town, and I submit."[131] [Footnote 130: Goethe to Kestner, November 10th, 1772. _Werke, Briefe_, Band ii. 35.] [Footnote 131: To the same, September 15th, 1773. _Ib._ p. 104.] In his sister Cornelia, as formerly, he had a sympathetic confidant equally in his affairs of the heart and in his literary and artistic ambitions, but in the course of the year 1773 he was deprived of her soothing and stimulating influence. In October she was betrothed to J.G. Schlosser, who has already been noted as one of Goethe's sager counsellors, and the marriage took place on November 1st. "I rejoice in their joy," he wrote to Sophie von la Roche, "though, at the same time, it is mostly to my own loss." Other friends, also, in the course of the same year, he complains, were departing and leaving him in dreary solitude. "My poor existence," he writes to Kestner, "is becoming petrified. This summer everyone is going--Merck with the Court to Berlin, his wife to Switzerland, my sister, and Fraeulein Flachsland, you, everybody. And I am alone. If I do not take a wife or hang myself, say that life is right dear to me, or something, if you like, which does me more honour."[132] So in May he describes himself as alone and daily becoming more so; in October as "entirely alone," and as indescribably rejoiced at the return of Merck towards the close of the year. [Footnote 132: _Ib._ pp. 82-3.] CHAPTER IX SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS