compel myself to look fixedly either backward or forward in my life, so
that from the 4th of June up to the present hour my journal has remained
empty. Yet every day I might have had occasion to praise Thee, O my God,
but my soul is in anguish. Lord, do not turn from me; the more are the
obstacles the more need is there of strength."

In the evening he added these few words to the lines that he had written
in the morning:--

"Desolation, despair, and death over my friend, over my very deeply loved
Dittmar."

This letter which he wrote to his family contains the account of the
tragic event:--

"You know that when my best friends, A., C., and Z., were gone, I became
particularly intimate with my well-beloved Dittmar of Anspach; Dittmar,
that is to say a true and worthy German, an evangelical Christian,
something more, in short, than a man! An angelic soul, always turned
toward the good, serene, pious, and ready for action; he had come to live
in a room next to mine in Professor Grunler's house; we loved each other,
upheld each other in our efforts, and, well or ill, bare our good or evil
fortune in common. On this last spring evening, after having worked in
his room and having strengthened ourselves anew to resist all the
torments of life and to advance towards the aim that we desired to
attain; we went, about seven in the evening, to the baths of Redwitz. A
very black storm was rising in the sky, but only as yet appeared on the
horizon. E., who was with us, proposed to go home, but Dittmar
persisted, saying that the canal was but a few steps away. God permitted
that it should not be I who replied with these fatal words. So he went