Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/189

Rh one can well recover from misfortune, and that one may be saved from dangers and need not always break one's neck. I looked with tolerance, too, on what men did and pursued, and found many things worthy of praise which my old gentleman could not by any means abide. Indeed, once when he had sketched the world to me, rather from the distorted side, I observed from his appearance that he meant to close the game with an important trump-card. He shut tight his blind left eye, as he was wont to do in such cases, looked sharp out of the other, and said in a nasal voice, "Even in God I discover defects."

My Timonic mentor was also a mathematician; but his practical turn drove him to mechanics, though he did not work himself. A clock, wonderful indeed in those days, which indicated, not only the days and hours, but the motions of the sun and moon, he caused to be made according to his own plan. On Sunday, about ten o'clock in the morning, he always wound it up himself; which he could do the more regularly, as he never went to church. I never saw company nor guests at his house; and only twice in ten years do I remember to have seen him dressed, and walking out of doors.

My various conversations with these men were not insignificant, and each of them influenced me in his own way. From every one, I had as much attention as his own children, if not more; and each strove to increase his delight in me as in a beloved son, while he aspired to mould me into his moral counterpart. Olenschlager would have made me a courtier, Von Reineck a diplomatic man of business: both, the latter particularly, sought to disgust me with poetry and authorship. Huesgen wished me to be a Timon after his fashion, but, at the same time, an able jurisconsult,—a necessary profession, as he thought, with which one could, in a regular manner, defend one's self and