A young Russian traveling through Frankfurt falls suddenly for an Italian confectioner's sister and gets engaged, only to be seduced away from her by the magnetic, manipulative wife of an old schoolfriend.
Books mentioned in The Torrents of Spring (3)
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “He went in to look at Danneker's Ariadne, which he did not much care for, visited the house of Goethe, of whose works he had, however, only read _Werter_, and that in the French translation.”
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin: “He recollected for some reason Lensky's parting from Olga in _Oniegin_.”
The Aeneid by Virgil: “I read the _AEneid_ with him.”