My mother, by nature very lively and cheerful, spent under these circumstances very tedious days.  Her little housekeeping was soon provided for.  The good woman’s mind, inwardly never unoccupied, wished to find an interest in something; and that which was nearest at hand was religion, which she embraced the more fondly as her most eminent female friends were cultivated and hearty worshippers of God.  At the head of these stood Fraeulein von Klettenberg.  She is the same person from whose conversations and letters arose the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,” which are found inserted in “Wilhelm Meister.”  She was slenderly formed, of the middle size:  a hearty natural demeanor had been made still more pleasing by the manners of the world and the court.  Her very neat attire reminded of the dress of the Hernhutt women.  Her serenity and peace of mind never left her; she looked upon her sickness as a necessary element of her transient earthly existence; she suffered with the greatest patience, and, in painless intervals, was lively and talkative.  Her favorite, nay, indeed, perhaps her only, conversation, was on the moral experiences which a man who observes himself can form in himself; to which was added the religious views which, in a very graceful manner, nay, with genius, came under her consideration as natural and supernatural.  It scarcely needs more to recall back to the friends of such representations, that complete delineation composed from the very depths of her soul.  Owing to the very peculiar course she had taken from her youth upwards, the distinguished rank in which she had been born and educated, and the liveliness and originality of her mind, she did not agree very well with the other ladies who had set out on the same road to salvation.  Frau Griesbach, the chief of them, seemed too severe, too dry, too learned:  she knew, thought, comprehended, more than the others, who contented themselves with the development of their feelings; and she was therefore burdensome to them, because every one neither could nor would carry with her so great an apparatus on the road to bliss.  But for this reason most of them were indeed somewhat monotonous, since they confined themselves to a certain terminology which might well have been compared to that of the later sentimentalists.  Fraeulein von Klettenberg guided her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self-complacency, to see her own reflections in the image of Count Zindendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank.  Now she found in me what she needed, a lively young creature, striving after an unknown happiness, who, although he could not think himself an extraordinary sinner, yet found himself in no comfortable condition, and was perfectly healthy neither in body nor soul.  She was delighted with what nature had given me, as well as with much which I had gained for myself.  And, if she conceded to me many advantages, this was by no means humiliating