Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/210

190 Königsthal, the Nuremberg chargé-d'affaires, occupied the upper floor, we were still more crowded than in the time of the French. This served me as a new pretext for being out of doors, and to pass the greater part of the day in the streets, that I might see all that was open to public view.

After the preliminary alteration and arrangement of the rooms in the town-house had seemed to us worth seeing; after the arrival of the ambassadors one after another, and their first solemn ascent in a body, on the 6th of February, had taken place, — we admired the coming in of the imperial commissioners, and their ascent also to the Römer, which was made with great pomp. The dignified person of the Prince of Lichtenstein made a good impression; yet connoisseurs maintained that the showy liveries had already been used on another occasion, and that this election and coronation would hardly equal in brilliancy that of Charles the Seventh. We younger folks were content with what was before our eyes: all seemed to us very fine, and much of it perfectly astonishing.

The electoral congress was fixed at last for the 3d of March. New formalities again set the city in motion, and the alternate visits of ceremony on the part of the ambassadors kept us always on our legs. We were, moreover, compelled to watch closely; as we were not only to gape about, but to note everything well, in order to give a proper report at home, and even to make out many little memoirs, on which my father and Herr von Königsthal had deliberated, partly for our exercise and partly for their own information. And certainly this was of peculiar advantage to me; as I was enabled very tolerably to keep a living election and coronation diary, as far as regarded externals.

The person who first of all made a durable impression upon me was the chief ambassador from the elect-