Delphi Collected Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe \(Illustrated\) pdfdrive com

“POSTSCRIPT FOR POSTSCRIPT.

“Tell  me,  what  does  our  cousin  mean  in  his  postscript  about  Valerina?  This

question has doubly occurred to me. She is the only person whom he mentions

by name. We others are to him nieces, aunts, agents; no personalities, but only

denominations. Valerina, the daughter of our lawyer! A fair, pretty child enough,

who may have dazzled the eyes of our Herr Cousin before his departure. She is

married, well and happily; that I need not tell you. But he knows as little about it

as he knows in other respects about us. By no means forget to tell him, also in a

postscript, that Valerina has become prettier every day, and on this very account

too has made a very good match: that she is the wife of a rich landowner. The

beautiful  blonde  is  married:  make  that  quite  clear  to  him.  But  now,  dear  aunt,

this  is  not  yet  all.  How  he  can  remember  the  fair  beauty  so  well,  and  yet

confound her with the daughter of the dissolute tenant, a wild romp of a brunette,

called  Nachodina,  who  is  gone  no  one  knows  where  —  this  is  altogether

incomprehensible  to  me,  and  puzzles  me  wonderfully,  for  it  seems  that  Sir

Cousin,  who  boasts  of  his  good  memory,  mixes  up  names  and  persons  in  an

extraordinary way. Perhaps he feels this defect, and wants to refresh again what

has been forgotten by your description. Keep a tight hand on him, I beg you; but

try to find out how Valerina and Nachodina are, and what Inas and Trinas and all

are still preserved in his imagination, whilst the Ettas and Ilias have disappeared

from it. The messenger! the confounded messenger!”