Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/71

Rh, thought at once of the beggar. He went home, and found him beneath the stairs, quite dead. In his folded hands the saintly man clutched a paper, which his old father sought in vain to take from him. He returned to the church, and told all this to the emperor and the Pope, who thereupon, with their courtiers and clergy, set off to visit the corpse of the saint. When they reached the spot, the holy father took the paper without difficulty out of the hands of the dead man, and handed it to the emperor, who thereupon caused it to be read aloud by his chancellor. The paper contained the history of the saint. Then you should have seen the grief of his parents and wife, which now became excessive,—to think that they had had near to them a son and husband so dear, for whom there was nothing too good that they would not have done; and then, too, to know how ill he had been treated! They fell upon his corpse and wept so bitterly, that there was not one of the bystanders who could refrain from tears. Moreover, among the multitude of the people who gradually flocked to the spot, there were many sick, who were brought to the body, and by its touch were made whole."

When she had finished her story, she affirmed over and over again, as she dried her eyes, that she had never heard a more touching history; and I, too, was seized with so great a desire to weep, that I had the greatest difficulty to hide and suppress it. After dinner I looked out the legend itself in "Father Cochem," and found that the good dame had dropped none of the purely human traits of the story, while she had clean forgotten all the tasteless remarks of this writer.

We keep going continually to the window, watching the weather, and are at present very near offering a prayer to the wind and clouds. Long evenings and universal stillness are the elements in which writing thrives right merrily; and I am convinced, that if, for