双语·少年维特的烦恼 八月十五日

AUGUST 15.

There can be no doubt that in this world nothing is so indispensable as love. I observe that Lotte could not lose me without a pang, and the very children have but one wish; that is, that I should visit them again tomorrow. I went this afternoon to tune Lotte’s piano. But I could not do it, for the little ones insisted on my telling them a story; and Lotte herself urged me to satisfy them. I waited upon them at tea, and they are now as fully contented with me as with Lotte; and I told them my very best tale of the princess who was waited upon by dwarfs. I improve myself by this exercise, and am quite surprised at the impression my stories create. If I sometimes invent an incident which I forget upon the next narration, they remind one directly that the story was different before; so that I now endeavour to relate with exactness the same anecdote in the same monotonous tone, which never changes. I find by this, how much an author injures his works by altering them, even though they be improved in a poetical point of view. The first impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.