"Capital!" cried Fritz; "you must be a good fellow, to make sport for the mam'selles; they are such excellent people, especially Mam'selle Alide; and the old folks, too, are fond of having everything go on pleasantly." He looked critically at Goethe's shabby costume, evidently taking him for a poor enough starveling, but he was honest-hearted and amiable, and, besides, Wolfgang was to leave his good horse in the stable; so, without any ado, he consented to the bargain, adding, complacently, "If you wish to insinuate yourself, this is the right way."
Goethe soon stood smart enough in the court-yard, and his new friend looked with much satisfaction at the counterpart. "Topp! Mr. Brother," he cried, giving his hand, which Wolfgang grasped heartily, "don't come too near my girl; she might make a mistake."
"Let me go in with you a moment," said Goethe, "that I may dress my hair like yours." "Since my intentions are enigmatical," he thought, "I will make myself an external riddle also." In a short time his soft brown locks were knotted jauntily on top, and with the help of a burnt cork his delicate arched eyebrows were thickened and darkened, and made to meet over his nose like those of the innkeeper's son. Then, taking the gayly-beribboned hat, he said, "Now, have you not something or other to be done at the parsonage, that I might announce myself there in a natural manner?"
"Good," said the lad; "but in that case you must wait a couple of hours yet. There is a woman confined at our house. I will offer to take the cake to the parson's wife, and you may carry it over. Pride must pay its penalty, and so must a joke."
His first device to beguile the tedious time was to order breakfast. He sat at the table familiarly with Fritz, and proposed to loiter an hour or so at the meal; but his exercise in the bracing air had added such zest to his appetite that when he had satisfied his hunger he found, to his surprise, but twenty minutes sped of his two hours' penance. Fritz suggested that Goethe, being an apt and amiable fellow, should go with him to the farmyard and stables and superintend the household arrangements for the day, and perhaps lend here and there a helping hand. Goethe was just the man to have interested himself deeply at any other moment in all the particulars of this active, healthy life, these varied duties, this genial, pleasant occupation which Fritz was to inherit and in which he already performed a large share of the work. Besides, the open-hearted peasant took the stranger into his confidence, and imparted various perplexities of his love-affairs, which just now were in rather an embarrassing condition. It was Lotte who held him to some foolish pledge of his boyhood, and it was Minna of the parsonage who possessed his heart. But Goethe was haunted by the vision of Alide, and burning with impatience to realize his dream: so he lent but an abstracted and unsympathetic ear to the prosy details of crops and marketings and tavern-profits, curiously interspersed with the idyllic complications of the peasant's personal history.
Meanwhile, at the parsonage, Alide also had risen betimes, and, as the events of the past evening recurred to her, her heart beat with unwonted excitement at the thought of meeting again this strange young man and penetrating his mystery. This searching daylight, she said to herself, would reveal all; it was only the dimness of lamplight and moonlight that had made her fancy such sudden, subtle changes in his countenance. Yet it was not his appearance only that had altered. How thoroughly self-possessed she found him when she had advanced, in compassion for his embarrassment, to ask him to touch the harpsichord! And what did Herr Waldstein mean by interrupting that, burst of eloquence at the supper-table? Never before had she heard a man talk like that; she could not raise her eyes while he spoke. Ah! had she seen him at such a moment, she would have divined who and what he was. When she did look, it was too late; the curtain had been again drawn.
Hitherto, when she had been in doubt about a stranger, she had never failed to appeal to her mother's decision, with unquestioning faith in the infallibility of that wise, deliberate judgment. Now, however, she did not dream of turning to any one for counsel; no one suspected the hidden treasure of which she had caught a glimpse. Her mother seemed grave, and even displeased, when Dr. Steck had spoken so eloquently at the table, and Rahel had no eyes for any one else while Max was with her. She would discover everything for herself, and then present to them all her prince in disguise, and he should know that never for an instant had she been deceived by the shabby surface.
She looked more like a child than yesterday, as she sprang down-stairs into the open air, for she had left her plaited hair hanging down her back, and replaced her coronet of braids with a snood of pale-blue ribbon. But the serious eyes held something more suggestive of the perfect flowering of maidenhood than any light they possessed before they had fallen upon Goethe's face.
The family were just seating themselves at the breakfast-table when the door opened, and Alide, who had glanced up eagerly, saw, with a chill of disappointment, Herr Waldstein enter alone. Before the pastor could inquire about his new guest, Max said, with some constraint, "My friend begs me to tell you all, with a great many apologies for his apparent rudeness, and many more thanks for your kindness to him, that he has been obliged to return in haste to Strasburg."
"I am sorry for that," said the pastor; "I flatter myself that I can judge character pretty accurately, and that youth pleased me amazingly: he was a fine, ingenuous fellow. Well, I doubt not but he will turn up again."