with a thoroughly good
pronunciation; on which account they deemed it better to go to some
young Englishman.

After dinner, Goethe showed me some experiments relating to his theory
of colors. The subject was, however, new to me; I neither understood
the phenomena, nor what he said about them. Nevertheless, I hoped that
the future would afford me leisure and opportunity to initiate myself a
little into this science.

* * * * *

_Thursday, November_ 13.--Some days ago, as I was walking one fine
afternoon towards Erfurt, I was joined by an elderly man, whom I
supposed, from his appearance, to be an opulent citizen. We had not
talked together long, before the conversation turned upon Goethe. I
asked him whether he knew Goethe. "Know him?" said he, with some
delight; "I was his valet almost twenty years!" He then launched into
the praises of his former master. I begged to hear something of Goethe's
youth, and he gladly consented to gratify me.

"When I first lived with him," said he, "he might have been about
twenty-seven years old; he was thin, nimble, and elegant in his person.
I could easily have carried him in my arms."

I asked whether Goethe, in that early part of his life here, had not
been very gay. "Certainly," replied he; "he was always gay with the gay,
but never when they passed a certain limit; in that case he usually
became grave. Always working and seeking; his mind always bent on art
and science; that was generally the way with my master. The duke often
visited him in the evening, and then they often talked on learned topics
till late at night, so that I got extremely tired, and wondered when the
duke would go. Even then he was interested in natural science.

"One time he rang in the middle of the night, and when I entered his
room I found he had rolled his iron bed to the window, and was lying
there, looking out upon the heavens. 'Have you seen nothing in the sky?'
asked he; and when I answered in the negative, he bade me run to the
guard-house, and ask the man on duty if he had seen nothing. I went
there; the guard said he had seen nothing, and I returned with this
answer to my master, who was still in the same position, lying in his
bed, and gazing upon the sky. 'Listen,' said he to me; 'this is an
important moment; there is now an earthquake, or one is just going to
take place;' then he made me sit down on the bed, and showed me by what
signs he knew this."

I aske