Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/413

Rh letter over and over again. When she was told that I wished to take my leave, she rose and dehvered to me the folded paper. "Say to my son," she said, with a noble vivacity, not to say enthusiasm, "tell my son how happy the news you have brought me of him has made us. Say to my son that I thus fold him to my heart" (here she stretched out her arms and again closed them over her bosom); "that every day in prayer I suppHcate God and our blessed Lady for him; that I give my blessing to him and to his wife, and that I have no wish but, before I die, to see him once more with these eyes, which have shed so many tears on his account."

The peculiar elegance of the Italian favoured the choice and the noble arrangement of her words, which, moreover, were accompanied with those very lively gestures, by which this people usually give an incredible charm to everything they say. Not unmoved, I took my leave. They all held out their hands to me: the children even accompanied me to the door, and while I descended the steps, ran to the balcony of the window, which opened from the kitchen into the street, called after me, nodded their adieus, and repeatedly cried out to me not to forget to come again and see them. They were still standing on the balcony, when I turned the corner.

I need not say that the interest I took in this family excited in me the liveliest desire to be useful to them, and to help them in their great need. Through me they were now a second time deceived; and hopes of assistance, which they had no previous expectation of, had been again raised, through the curiosity of a son of the North, only to be disappointed.

My first intention was to pay them, before my departure, those fourteen oncie which the fugitive had borrowed of them and not repaid, and, by expressing a hope that he would repay me, to conceal from them