Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/246

222 confession." "What do you want to know?" retorted I. He seated himself, drew out a paper, and began to question me: "Have you not recommended N. N. to your grandfather as a candidate for the ... place?" I answered, "Yes." "Where did you become acquainted with him? " "In my walks." "In what company?" I hesitated, for I would not willingly betray my friends. "Silence will not do now," he continued, "for all is sufficiently known." "What is known, then?" said I. "That this man has been introduced to you by others like him — in fact, by ..." Here he named three persons whom I had never seen nor known, which I immediately explained to the questioner. "You pretend," he resumed, "not to know these men, and have yet had frequent meetings with them." "Not in the least," I replied: "for, as I have said, except the first, I do not know one of them, and even him I have never seen in a house." "Have you not often been in ... street?" "Never," I replied. This was not entirely conformable to the truth. I had once accompanied Pylades to his sweetheart, who lived in that street; but we had entered by the back door, and remained in the summer-house. I therefore supposed that I might permit myself the subterfuge that I had not been in the street itself.

The good man put more questions, all of which I could answer with a denial; for of all that he wished to learn I knew nothing. At last he seemed to become vexed, and said, "You repay my confidence and good will very badly: I come to save you. You cannot deny that you have composed letters for these people themselves or for their accomplices, have furnished them writings, and have thus been accessory to their evil acts; for the question is of nothing less than of forged papers, false wills, counterfeit bonds, and things of the sort. I have come, not only as a friend of the family, I come in the name and by