Charlotte's former servant's murder is the violent culmination of a story Werther has already heard from the peasant lad himself. The unnamed victim is found dead at his own door in Walheim; the accused is the former servant, whose fixation on the widow had ended in dismissal and exclusion. The crime exposes the consequences of that attachment while bringing Werther's sympathy for the lad into direct conflict with the law's demand for public security.

Background and Motive

Before the murder, Werther had met the peasant lad and listened as he described his growing passion for the widow, in whose household he had served. He said that his feelings had overwhelmed his ordinary judgment and that he had pursued her after she went upstairs. When she did not accept his entreaties, he resorted to violence. He maintained that he had wanted to marry her and spend their lives together, and Werther was moved by the lad's account of both his attachment and his misfortune. The evidence gives this history without detailing the encounter; its importance is the escalation from longing to conduct that could not be accepted or undone.

The lad's dismissal also had a wider cause than the widow's personal response to him. Her brother had long disliked him and feared that a second marriage by his sister, who had no children, might deprive his own children of the considerable inheritance they expected from her. The lad was ultimately turned away, and the scandal made it impossible for the widow to take him back, even if she had wished to do so. She hired another servant. Reports suggested that this new employee might marry her, while the former servant was determined not to survive that possibility. The murder follows this chain of exclusion and threatened replacement: the former servant's attachment persists, but the household and its future have moved beyond his control.

Discovery and Apprehension

The crime first reaches Werther at the hunting-lodge. He arrives while the household is unsettled and learns from the eldest boy that a peasant has been murdered in Walheim. At first the news makes little impression on him. Inside, he finds Charlotte reasoning with her father, who, despite his infirmity, insists on going to the scene to investigate. The victim has been found dead at his own door. Because the murdered man had served the widow, suspicion falls on the person previously dismissed from her employment.

Werther immediately recognizes what the news may mean and hurries to Walheim. The familiar route takes him past the lime trees to the house where the victim has been carried. The place, associated with the village children's former play, now marks the passage from intimacy and ordinary communal life to a criminal investigation. The winter surroundings—leafless trees, frost, withered hedges, and snow-covered gravestones—set the murder against a landscape stripped of its earlier warmth. Werther sees the contrast as more than scenery: feelings he regards as among humanity's noblest have ended in violence and death.

At the inn, where the village has gathered, armed peasants bring in a prisoner. Werther recognizes him as the former servant he had seen before, then approaches and asks what he has done. The man answers with composure that no one will now marry the widow and that she will marry no one. His response makes the motive explicit: he has killed the rival whose possible marriage represented the final loss of the future he had imagined with her. The account does not name the victim or describe the killing itself; it identifies the act, its perpetrator, and the reason the prisoner gives for it.

Werther's Intervention

After the prisoner is taken into the inn, Werther leaves in a state of intense agitation. Yet the news changes the form of his distress. Rather than remaining absorbed in his familiar melancholy and indifference to events, he feels pity for the accused and becomes intent on saving him from the punishment ahead. Werther considers the former servant's life so unfortunate and his crime so excusable that he believes he can persuade others to see the case as he does. His judgment is bound up with recognition: he regards his own condition as nearly similar to the prisoner's and feels drawn to defend someone whose attachment has led to ruin.

Werther begins composing an impassioned address for the judge on the way back to the hunting-lodge, speaking aloud the argument he intends to make. There he finds Albert already present. Werther recovers from his initial perplexity and argues with great warmth, feeling, and determination. The judge is not persuaded. He questions Werther's appeal, reprimands him for acting as an advocate for a murderer, and argues that accepting such a precedent would put every law and public safety at risk. He also says that he cannot disregard his responsibility: the case must proceed in its usual course. The scene therefore gives Werther a clear objective, but not the power to secure the result he wants.

Consequences and Significance

The evidence concludes with the judge's refusal to let Werther's personal interpretation determine the legal process; it does not report a verdict or the prisoner's eventual fate. The immediate consequence shown is the collision between Werther's plea for the accused and the judge's obligation to follow ordinary procedure. Compassion and legal accountability are presented as competing responses to the same crime, rather than as interchangeable judgments.

The murder also transforms the earlier account of the peasant lad. Werther had treated that narrative as an example of intense, sincere love among people he considered uneducated, and had recognized in it a possible likeness to his own fate. The killing makes that identification dangerous: devotion does not remain a private feeling but becomes a claim imposed on another person's life and choices. Werther's attempt to defend the former servant reveals the strength of his sympathy, while the judge's rebuke marks the limit of sympathy when it threatens to excuse violence. By placing the murder after Werther's earlier encounter with the lad, the narrative makes the crime both a consequence of the widow's household conflict and a test of Werther's tendency to read another person's suffering through his own.