Am I not a bit of a scamp, seeing I am in love with all these girls?
Who could resist them when they are good; for as for beauty, that does not touch me; and, indeed, all my acquaintances are more good than beautiful."[26] This is not the tone of an ardent lover speaking of his mistress, and it is evident that Cornelia was not the confidant of his real relations to Kaethchen, which, indeed, would have been as distasteful to her as to their father.

In another letter, addressed to her in the following August, he is not more frank.

There he tells her that Annette is now his muse, and that, as Herodotus names the books of his History after the nine muses, so he has given the name of Annette to a collection of twelve poetical pieces, magnificently copied in manuscript.[27] But, he significantly adds, Annette had no more to do with his poetry than the Muses had to do with the History of Herodotus.[28] To what extent this statement expressed the truth we shall presently see.
[Footnote 26: _Ib._ p.86.The passage is in French.] [Footnote 27: This was the work of Behrisch, who was a virtuoso in calligraphy.] [Footnote 28: _Werke, Briefe_, i.

96-7.] In October, 1767, Goethe resumed his correspondence with Behrisch, and it is in this part of it that we have the fullest revelation of his state of mind during the last year of his residence in Leipzig.

With the exception of occasional digressions these letters are solely concerned with his relations to Kaethchen, and their outpourings afterwards received their faithful echo in the incoherences of Werther.