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Fraeulein von Klettenberg guided her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self- complacency, to see her own reflections in the image of Count Zindendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank.
Goethe, during his illness, received great attention from Fraeulein von Klettenberg, a friend of his mother's, a pietist of the Moravian school. She initiated him into the mystical writings of those abstracted saints, and she engaged him in the study of alchemy, which served at once to prepare him for the conception of Faust and for the scientific researches of his later days.
The man whom the saintly Fraulein von Klettenberg chose for her friend, whom clear-sighted, stern-judging Herder declared that he loved as he did his own soul; the man whose thoughtful kindness is celebrated by Herder's incomparable wife, whom Karl August and the Duchess Luise cherished as a brother; the man whom children everywhere welcomed as their ready playfellow and sure ally, of whom pious Jung Stilling lamented that admirers of Goethe's genius knew so little of the goodness of his heart, can this have been a bad man, heartless, cold?
The good woman's mind, inwardly never unoccupied, wished to find an interest in something; and that which was nearest at hand was religion, which she embraced the more fondly as her most eminent female friends were cultivated and hearty worshippers of God. At the head of these stood Fraeulein von Klettenberg.
If, on the one hand, his loves had revealed to him the passional side of feminine nature, he had enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of some of the purest and noblest of womankind. Conspicuous among these are Fräulein von Klettenberg and the Duchess Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaks of but in terms of veneration.
Fraeulein von Klettenberg guided her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self-complacency, to see her own reflections in the image of Count Zindendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank.
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