Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/214

194 forced to undertake many dangerous affairs: the crowd of strangers increased, and it became more and more difficult to find lodgings for them. Nor was there unanimity as to the limits of the different precincts of the electors. The magistracy wished to keep from the citizens the burdens which they were not bound to bear; and thus day and night there were hourly grievances, redresses, contests, and misunderstandings.

The entrance of the Elector of Mainz occurred on the 21st of May. Then began the cannonading, with which for a long time we were often to be deafened. This solemnity was important in the series of ceremonies; for all the men whom we had hitherto seen, high as they were in rank, were still only subordinates: but here appeared a sovereign, an independent prince, the first after the emperor, preceded and accompanied by a large retinue worthy of himself. Of the pomp which marked his entrance I should have much to tell, if I did not purpose returning to it hereafter, and on an occasion which no one could easily guess.

What I refer to is this: the same day Lavater, on his return home from Berlin, came through Frankfort, and saw the solemnity. Now, though such worldly formalities could not have the least value for him, this procession, with its display and all its accessories, might have been distinctly impressed on his very lively imagination; for many years afterward, when this eminent but singular man showed me a poetical paraphrase of, I believe, the Revelation of St. John, I discovered the entrance of Antichrist copied, step by step, figure by figure, circumstance by circumstance, from the entrance of the Elector of Mainz into Frankfort, in such a manner, too, that even the tassels on the heads of the dun-coloured horses were not wanting. More can be said on this point when I reach the epoch of that strange kind of poetry by which it was supposed that the myths of the Old and New Testa-