JUNE 16

You complain that you have not received any letters from me, but I thought you might have known the reason. I have fallen in love with someone. I do not know if she feels the same about me. I am not sure that I can tell you very clearly about how we met one another. I can only say that it pleases me greatly to know this wonderful woman. It is not easy for me to explain why it is I feel so strongly about her. I simply cannot stop thinking about her. She is kind, but strong. Her thoughts are peaceful, but her spirit is full of energy.

Oh! But I must stop this. I am saying nothing. Maybe I will wait to write about her to you. My mind is too wild now. No ... I must write about her now! To tell you the truth, from the moment I began this letter I have had a great desire to put this pen and paper away and run out the door to go and see her. I have had to force myself all day to remain here.

Oh, Wilhelm ... I failed. I went to her. I have just now come back. I am presently writing this at my dinner table. My goodness, how happy it made me to find her spending time with her eight brothers and sisters J

I see now that I am not being clear. I am writing as though I were writing in my diary. Alright then, prepare yourself, for I will now tell you the whole story.

Do you remember the local judge I wrote to you about? I, finally, managed to visit his home in the country. Oh, how my heart shakes when I think about how I almost did not go at all! Luckily, Fortune has been on my side lately. A group of young people decided to have a party outside of town. To this party, I accompanied a lovely, but rather uninteresting girl. In the carriage, the girl's cousin joined us as well. On the way there, we stopped at a hunting lodge.

"Be careful, now," the girl whispered to me, "You are about to meet a very lovely young woman. Don't let yourself fall too easily in love with her. She has already arranged to marry a man who has just gone to collect the money his recently dead father left for him."

I did not pay much attention to her words, for I felt they were a little childish. While getting down from the carriage, I was met by a servant, who told me that the lady was still preparing to go.

"Miss Charlotte will only be a minute or so," she informed me.

Looking up at the sky, I noticed some dark clouds were beginning to come together.

"Oh! I hope it doesn't rain. How horrible that would be!" said my partner's aunt from the carriage.

"Don't worry. It won't," I replied, trying to comfort her, while feeling quite worried about the weather myself.

I then went to the lodge and entered the front door. Inside, I found a beautiful, but simply dressed woman standing in the center of a group of children. She was handing out slices of bread to each child, giving larger pieces to the older ones. She did this very carefully and lovingly. Each child waited patiently with his hands held forward, and then, once given the food, would immediately run off to eat it, or would go outside to the front of the house to see who had come to take their Charlotte away for the evening.

"I apologize for not being ready," said the young woman, "I was so busy this evening that I forgot to prepare dinner for the children. They won't eat any food unless it's cooked by me."

I did not respond in my usual humorous way, for I was so impressed with her, I could not think clearly. The children watched as I went to the smallest of them, a very cute little thing. He moved away from me, with a frightened look on his face.

"Be nice to your cousin, Louis," I heard Charlotte say behind me. The boy then did as his sister told him and held out his hand for me to shake.

"Are we now relatives?" I said, joking, to Charlotte.

"I call all of my friends 'cousin'." She replied.

Just before going, she asked her eleven-year-old sister, Sophy, to watch the other children until she returned later in the evening. "And tell father 'Hello' for me, when he comes home."

The children all seemed sad to see their sister go. Two of her brothers even ran and jumped onto our carriage. She asked them to come down, but I said that it would be fine for them to ride with us for a short time, if they wanted to.

My partner for the night and her aunt politely greeted Charlotte and made friendly comments about her clothing. She too returned the compliment and then asked her little brothers to go and obey Sophy. They both took her hand and, one by one, kissed it, before running away and promising to be good.

"Are you done yet with the book I gave you?" the aunt asked Charlotte as we drove along.

"To be honest, I'm giving it back to you. I don't enjoy it much," she answered.

I asked Charlotte the name of the book, and could not believe it when she said ________. (We have not included the name here, in order to avoid hurting the author's feelings.) I was impressed with the way she talked about the book. And I could see that she appreciated my ability to understand her feelings about it.

"As a girl, I liked to read love stories," she said, "I would often go to a comfortable place in my home and spend the day experiencing the joy and sadness of a romance. Now, however, I have less time, so I only read books that have stories similar to my own life experience. This pleases me most of all."

I managed to control my excitement, until she began to talk about books I had recently read. Immediately, I shared my own opinions with her about them and started a long discussion with her about them. I went on for so long, that I completely forgot about the other two people in the carriage. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the aunt giving me an unhappy look. I, however, was so happy that I did not care.

Charlotte then talked about her love of dancing and music. "When I feel sad, I just play a dance song on the piano and I feel better again," she said. I know that, you, my friend, can imagine the way I felt hearing such words come from her beautiful, red lips. I felt drunk with excitement, and did not even realize we had arrived at the party, until everyone else was already out of the carriage.

Almost immediately, two men, who had arranged to be their partners for the evening, approached Charlotte and the aunt; together, we all entered the party and joined in a dance. Charlotte's dancing is so wonderful to watch. Her movements are so full of energy. You can tell that she is thoroughly enjoying herself, and that all other people and things disappear from her mind for the moment.

I was fortunate to get to dance with her during the third song. It was a waltz. "Traditionally, we dance the waltz with the same partner from the song before," she said to me, "But, because I noticed that both of our partners are quite bad at this kind of dance, I wonder if we could change partners for the moment and you and I dance together. I saw that you are quite good."

This was arranged and we then walked out to the dance floor. Oh, what dancing! At first, we had trouble, because there were some people who did not know what they were doing. After a while, however, we were able to free ourselves from them and dance with a smaller group. I have never felt so good before! Moving about the floor with this beautiful girl in my arms ... it was like a dream. I promised myself from that moment, never to let any woman I love waltz with another man.

Afterward, we rested in the next room. I went to the food table and got the last orange. I gave it to Charlotte to enjoy. It hurt me greatly when I saw her offer, as a friendly gesture, some pieces of it to the people sitting next to her.

A little later, as we began the next dance and were swinging one another around with the greatest pleasure, I caught sight of a slightly older, but lovely woman looking seriously at Charlotte. She then pointed to my happy little dance partner and said, "Don't forget Albert!"

Naturally, I wanted to know who Albert was, so I asked Charlotte. At that moment, however, we had to move away horn each other in order to follow the dance. When we came back together I saw that her face looked a little serious, suddenly. Then she said, "Well, I needn't hide the truth. He's the man I am to marry."

I, of course, had been told about this in the carriage, but I still felt terribly disappointed. Oh, so greatly disappointed! In fact, I was so upset that I suddenly lost my place in the dance, and made it necessary for Charlotte to try and keep my movements under control Still, I managed to destroy the dance for everyone else.

Before the dance was over, a storm had gathered above the hall. The thunder and lightning came as a great surprise to the dancers and many of them (all girls) began to scream and cry from fright Even though it was just a storm, the people reacted to it in an extreme way, probably because they had been so unaware of its approach. Some of the women were even holding each other like the end of the world had finally come. The hostess of the party then calmed everyone by offering the comfort of another room with much smaller windows. Once inside the new room, Charlotte immediately went to work arranging a circle of chairs in order to play a game and take everyone's mind away from the storm outside.

"Alright. We'll play a counting game!" she announced to the group. "I'll walk around the outside of the circle and each person I pass must count up the next number. I will go around the circle until we get to one thousand. If someone says the wrong number, he is to be boxed on the ear." We all had a good time. When someone made a mistake, "Wham!" Charlotte would hit him and everyone would laugh. Someone else then made mistakes and got hits as the game increased in speed. I, too, got hit, for I made a couple of mistakes. It seemed to me that she hit me more forcefully than the others, and this made the experience even more enjoyable.

Before getting to a thousand, the game ended due to so much laughter. By this time the storm had also stopped and everyone went into different little groups to talk. I accompanied Charlotte back to the dance area.

"It seems my little game helped people to forget the storm." she said, "I was pretty frightened too, but I pretended not to care." Standing near a window, I could see the storm moving further away, the thunder sounding more and more gentle. The air smelled of rain. I looked over at Charlotte and saw her watching the rain. Her eyes then returned to mine and I could see tears beginning to form. Gently touching my hand, she said, "Klopstock!" Immediately, I recalled this famous writer's poem and knew what she meant. This filled me with so much feeling that I could not help crying as well. Without thinking, I pressed my lips to her hand. At that moment, I pitied Klopstock for never having the opportunity to look into this woman's eyes.

(end of section)