Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/426

394 backward. In short, had it been more durably built, it might have answered very well as a pleasure-house for persons of rank. But that which particularly interested me, and for which I did not grudge many a Büsel (a little silver coin then current) in order to procure a repeated entrance from the porter, was the embroidered tapestry with which they had lined the whole interior. Here, for the first time, I saw a specimen of those tapestries worked after Raffaelle's cartoons; and this sight was for me of very decided influence, as I became acquainted with the true and the perfect on a large scale, though only in copies. I went and came, and came and went, and could not satiate myself with looking; nay, a vain endeavour troubled me, because I would willingly have comprehended what interested me in so extraordinary a manner. I found these side-chambers highly delightful and refreshing, but the chief saloon so much the more shocking. This had been hung with many larger, more brilliant and richer, hangings, which were surrounded with crowded ornaments, worked after pictures by the modern French.

Now, I might perhaps have become reconciled to this style also, as my feelings, like my judgment, did not readily reject anything entirely; but the subject was excessively revolting to me. These pictures contained the history of Jason, Medea, and Creusa, and therefore an example of the most unhappy marriage. To the left of the throne was seen the bride struggling with the most horrible death, surrounded by persons full of sympathising woe; to the right was the father, horrified at the murdered babes before his feet; whilst the Fury, in her dragon-car, drove along into the air. And, that the horrible and atrocious should not lack something absurd, the white tail of that magic bull flourished out on the right hand from behind the red velvet of the gold-embroidered back of the throne;