Lotte’s father was suffering from a complaint that confined him to his room. He sent his carriage for her, and she drove out to see him. It was a beautiful winter day; the first heavy snow had fallen and covered the whole countryside.
Werther walked over on the following morning to accompany Lotte home in case Albert did not come for her. The clear weather had little effect on his dour mood. His heart was heavy, his unhappy view of things was deeply rooted in him, and his spirit could only pass from one painful thought to the next. Since he lived in a state of continual dissatisfaction with himself, the condition of others appeared to him as dubious and confused, too. He felt that he had disturbed the good relationship between Albert and Lotte and reproached himself on this score, and a secret resentment against Albert crept into his confusion.
On his way to fetch Lotte, his mind reverted to this subject. Yes, yes, he told himself, his jaw set hard…there you have it—the ultimate, friendly, tender relationship that participates in everything, a quiet, lasting faithfulness! Satiation—that’s what it is! And indifference. Doesn’t every miserable bit of business he has to do attract him more than his precious wife? Does he appreciate his good fortune? Does he respect her as she deserves to be respected? He has her…all very well and good…he has her. I know he has her just as I know all sorts of things. I think I have become accustomed to the knowledge, but in the end, it will drive me mad and be the death of me. And has his friendship for me remained constant? Doesn’t he see an interference in his rights in my devotion to Lotte, and a silent reproach in my attentions? I know it, I can feel it—he doesn’t like to see me. He would like to see me go. My presence oppresses him.
Werther walked fast, stopped often, stood still and seemed to want to turn back, but then he persevered and went steadily forward and with thoughts such as these and mumbling to himself, finally reached the lodge almost against his will.
He walked up to the door, asked after the old man and Lotte, and found the house in quite a stir. The oldest boy told him that there had been a disaster in Wahlheim. A peasant had been murdered. The news had no particular effect on Werther. He went into the living room and found Lotte trying to talk her father out of going over to look into the matter in spite of his weak condition. The murderer was still unknown. The dead man had been found in front of his door early that morning. Suspicions centered on someone. The murdered man was the servant of a widow who had had another man in her service before him. This man had been dismissed under disagreeable circumstances.
When Werther heard this, he became very agitated. “It couldn’t be!” he cried, and then, “I must go there at once!”
He rushed over to Wahlheim, every memory alive in him, and there was no doubt in his mind that the young man with whom he had spoken several times and whom he had come to like so much had committed the crime.
He had to pass under the linden trees to get to the inn where the body had been laid out and was horrified when he saw the beloved spot. Where the neighbor’s children had played once it was befouled with blood. Love and faithfulness—the most beautiful human emotions—had been transformed into violence and murder. The sturdy trees stood barren and thick with hoarfrost; the pretty hedges, arched over the low wall of the churchyard, were leafless; the snowcapped gravestones were visible through the gaps.
As Werther approached the inn in front of which the whole village had assembled there was a sudden hubbub of voices. A group of armed men was approaching from a distance, shouting that they had the murderer. Werther saw him and at once his doubts were dispelled. It was the boy who had loved the widow so much, whom Werther had met some time ago in his tacit fury and despair.
“What have you done, unhappy man?” Werther cried, walking up to the prisoner. The man looked at Werther quietly and was silent for a moment; then he said, “No one shall have her, and she shall have no one.” The men took the prisoner to the inn and Werther hurried away.
The impact of this horrifying experience created a state of chaos in his mind. For a moment he was torn out of his grief, his despondency and indifference to things, and sympathy for the young man overwhelmed him. He was seized by an indescribable urge to save him. He could feel the man’s misery, even as a criminal—he felt the man was innocent; and he could put himself so wholeheartedly into the poor wretch’s position that he was sure he could make others feel the same way. He wanted to speak for the man; the liveliest defense rushed to his lips. He tore over to the lodge, and all the way there could not keep from muttering to himself what he was going to say to the judge.
When he entered the room again, he found Albert present. For a moment this irritated him, but he soon regained control of himself and expounded to the judge how he felt about the crime. The old man shook his head several times, and although Werther set forth in the liveliest fashion and most passionately and truthfully anything and everything that one man could possibly say to excuse his neighbor, still, as is quite understandable, the judge remained unmoved. He didn’t even let Werther finish what he had to say, but disagreed heatedly and reproved him for defending a murderer. He explained that all law would be voided and the security of the state destroyed if Werther’s viewpoint were accepted, adding that he was in no position to do anything about it without taking grave responsibility upon himself. Everything would have to take its prescribed and orderly course.
But Werther did not give up so easily. He begged the judge at least to look the other way if anyone should help the man to escape! The judge, of course, rejected him on this count too. Albert, who at last joined in the conversation, sided with the judge. Werther was outnumbered, and in a state of abject misery took himself off, after the judge had told him several times, “The man is doomed.”
How deeply these words impressed Werther can be seen from a note found among his papers, words that must certainly have been written on that day: “You are doomed, my unfortunate friend. I can see it quite clearly—we are doomed.”
Werther especially resented Albert’s final word in the matter, spoken in the presence of the judge, and thought he could detect resentment against himself in it, and even though, after giving the matter more thought, the fact could not have escaped him that both men were right, he still felt that he would be denying his innermost self if he admitted it.
A note referring to this, which perhaps expresses Werther’s entire relationship to Albert, was found among his papers. “What good does it do me to tell myself again and again he is good, his behavior is impeccable…it tears me apart! I cannot be just!”
Since it was a mild evening and a thaw had set in, Lotte and Albert walked home. On the way, she looked about her every now and then as if she missed Werther’s company. Albert began to talk about Werther reprovingly, accusing him of being unjust. He touched upon the young man’s passionate nature and said he wished Werther would go away. “I wish it for our sakes as well,” he said, “and I beg you, try to guide his attitude toward you into other channels. See to it that he visits us less often. People are beginning to notice, and I know that there has been talk about it.”
Lotte was silent, and Albert seemed to feel her silence. At any rate, from then on, he never spoke of Werther in her presence, and if she mentioned him, he stopped talking or directed the conversation onto other topics.
Werther’s vain effort to save the unfortunate man was the last flickering flame of a light that was dying. After it, he sank even deeper into pain and lassitude. He became especially overwrought when he heard that he might be asked to testify against the man, who now denied his guilt.
Everything disagreeable that had ever happened to him in his active life—his grievance against the embassy, every failure that had hurt him—now ran rampant through his tormented mind. He let it justify his idleness; he felt cut off from all hope of ever again being able to regain a firm grip on life. Thus he finally drew closer to his sad end, lost in a fantastic sensitivity and infinite passion, in the eternal monotony of a sad intercourse with the gracious and beloved creature whose inner repose he disturbed, stormy in the powers that were left him, working them off with no goal, no prospects.
A few letters he left behind bear witness to the confusion and tempestuousness of his restless activities and struggle, and of his weariness of life. We include them here.
December 12th
Dear William, I am in the condition in which those unfortunates who
