To moral beauty of character in man or woman, Goethe, at all periods of his life, was peculiarly sensitive,[51] and in the Fraeulein he saw a woman who combined at once the most winning graces of her sex and the virtues of a saint.

For women of all ages and all types Goethe had always a singular attraction, and, though the Fraeulein must have discerned that he could never be a son or brother in the spirit, she was profoundly interested in the wayward youth in whom she saw a brand that deserved to be plucked from the burning.
[Footnote 51: _Cf._ his beautiful characterisation of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the Christian graces and of _reine Menschlichkeit_.] With a kind of half consent Goethe entered into the spirit of the pious circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut Community to which Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged.

Bound up with the Fraeulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body.

It is with evident irony that Goethe relates how in his own case the efficacy of these occult powers was tried.

Among the members of the religious community was a mysterious physician who was credited with possessing certain medicines of peculiar virtue.