May 4. — It is done: I leave you quietly, Wilhelm. I thank you for your friendship and your forbearance; you feared I might have rushed into this decision. It was you who urged me, some time ago, to seek a place at court; yet I confess that, without binding myself to follow it, the idea had long flattered me and kept returning to my mind. Now it is settled: I depart, and I thank you for having pushed me to this step. Yet I must make one observation: when a man, agitated and wrapped in clouds, feels the courage to live dying within him, what place could satisfy him? He would seek in vain; for it is not an outward situation that can heal the disorder of his soul. The causes of all that oppresses me lie within me, in my manner of seeing. And you know well that, if I cannot conquer these feelings, no situation will suit me; I shall be sad wherever I go. I will write to you of all this at length later; today I tell you only that I am leaving. The hour of departure is near; my heart has prepared itself for it. We shall meet again, Wilhelm, and I shall tell you all that I cannot tell you now. Be indulgent toward me in this crisis; help me with your counsel and your affection. In the meantime, I have composed the story I promised you: it is the story of poor Werther. You will receive it, and you will not refuse to read it, despite its sad tone and its excesses, or rather its burning tone. You will see how often he speaks of his passion as of a poison; you will see how he ceaselessly asks, and always in vain, for the strength to master his own soul. There is not a moment when he does not say to himself: enough, this must end; and he remains always the same. The lesson is a good one; but one must teach it to oneself, however hard it is. May 10. — There is here a delicious solitude, an inestimable good for a heart burdened like mine. Would that you were here, Wilhelm, to breathe with me in this solitude! Would that you could feel how noble and touching is the feeling that fills my soul on these walks around Wahlheim! The village lies at the foot of a hill; from the top one beholds the whole valley in the distance. I have climbed to the inn, the only place of refreshment in the village; it is there that I daily find my delight. A charming path leads me there, half an hour long, through a ravine which, from the road up to the mountains, is abandoned to all the caprices of nature. A limpid spring slides at the bottom of the path; the water, shaded by great trees, finds its way between the stones with a gentle murmur. Life there is calm, and death resembles sleep. When one stands in this little valley, from the height of the mountain, when one sees in the distance the green countryside, the rolling meadows, the winding brooks, the dark forests, the mountains from which light bluish vapors rise, when one sees all this, one no longer knows how to speak of nature, one no longer sees it as a thing apart; it fills the whole soul. I stand then, in sincere admiration, before a spectacle that unfolds itself like a soul before my heart; I form wishes for the creature from whom so many beauties emanate. My friend, when the twilight mist falls upon my eyes, when the setting sun casts its rays through the trembling branches of the forest and rests here and there upon the grass, when the laborer, weary of his toil, returns peacefully to his cottage, and the whole universe rests for him, I wish for myself a place in this universal repose. Ah, would that it were possible to express, to render, to make felt what a heart full, rich, overflowing, without a single human word, is! I am not more fortunate with language. What is best is to take fresh courage and to savor the peaceful existence that awaits us; and I rise from my seat, leave the hill, and return through the valley. How grand, how sublime, is that consciousness of a soul that knows its worth, that confidence in oneself and in the future! I understand all the fruits of such an existence when I find myself again in the midst of a world like mine. All this, Wilhelm, passes within me when I think of my future; but if, amid these bright reflections, a poor forgotten one, who since that day has been my companion, comes back to seize me, the charm is dissolved: I feel myself torn. For if man always knew why he loves, he would love no more.