ABSTRACT
The student of law did not have much to show his father as a result of his three years’ study, and the latter cannot possibly have found any cause for rejoicing either in the appearance of the boy or in the bags full of drawings and manuscripts, with Hoppe’s little law digest relegated to the bottom. There were scenes, but there was also a tacit agreement that, to begin with, there should be a rest and an interval. The sister, whom Goethe had rather neglected during his last year at Leipzig, now became his intimate companion again. She complained of her father’s harshness, and opposed it with a hardness of her own. The whole of her pent-up love was poured out on her brother. She tried to cheer him up. They invented a private language between themselves, which no one else could understand, and boldly used it in front of their parents. It was a chrysalis state, a cocoon phase.
