Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/103

Rh on my whole journey. She narrowly observed it, and was quite delighted when several more appeared, and she was able to recognise this tree. She was going, she told me, to Botzen, for the fair, where she guessed I, too, was hastening. When she met me there, I must buy her a fairing; which, of course, I promised to do. She intended to put on there her new coif, which she had had made out of her earnings at Munich. She would show it to me beforehand. So she opened the bandbox; and I could not do less than admire the head-gear, with its rich embroidery and beautiful ribbons.

Over another pleasant prospect we felt a mutual pleasure. She asserted that we had fine weather before us; for they always carried their barometer with them, and that was the harp. When the treble-string twanged, it was sure to be fine weather; and it had done so yesterday. I accepted the omen, and we parted in the best of humours and with the hope of a speedy meeting.

, Sept. 8, 1786.

Evening.

Hurried, not to say driven here by necessity, I have reached at last a resting-place in a calm, quiet spot just such as I could wish it to be. It has been a day which for many years it will be a pleasure to recall. I left Mittelwald about six in the morning, and a sharp wind soon perfectly cleared the sky. The cold was such as one looks for only in February. But now, in the splendour of the setting sun, the dark foreground thickly planted with fig-trees, and, peeping between them, the gray limestone rocks, and, behind all, the highest summit of the mountain covered with snow, and standing out in bold outline against the deep blue sky, furnish precious and ever-changing images.