Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/246

232 possible. And yet, all this notwithstanding, I clearly foresee, that, when I leave Rome, I shall wish that I were coming to it.

Nov. 8, 1786.

My strange and perhaps whimsical incognito proves useful to me in many ways that I never should have thought of. As every one thinks himself in duty bound to ignore who I am, and consequently never ventures to speak to me of myself and my works, they have no alternative left them but to speak of themselves, or of the matters in which they are most interested; and in this way I become circumstantially informed of the occupations of each, and of everything remarkable that is either taken in hand or produced. Hofrath Reiffenstein good-naturedly humours this whim of mine. As, however, for special reasons, he could not bear the name I had assumed, he immediately made a baron of me; and I am now called the Baron gegen Rondanini über ("the baron who lives opposite to the palace Rondanini"). This designation is sufficiently precise, especially as the Italians are accustomed to speak of people either by their Christian names, or else by some nickname: in short, I have gained my object; and I escape the dreadful annoyance of having to give everybody an account of myself and my works.

Nov. 9, 1786.

I frequently stand still a moment to survey, as it were, the heights I have already won. With much delight I look back to Venice, that grand creation that sprang out of the bosom of the seas, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter. In Rome the Rotunda, both by its exterior and interior, has moved me to offer a willing homage to its magnificence. In St. Peter's I learned to understand how art, no less than nature, annihilates the artificial measures and dimensions of man. And in the same way the Apollo Belvedere also