Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/58

44 of seeing her, and knowing her at once in all her grace and loveliness.

I now began to act my part with moderation, half ashamed to play a joke on such good people, whom I had time enough to observe; for the girls continued the previous conversation, and that with passion and some display of temper. All the neighbours and connections were again brought forward; and there seemed, to my imagination, such a swarm of uncles and aunts, relations, cousins, comers, goers, gossips, and guests, that I thought myself lodged in the liveliest world possible. All the members of the family had exchanged some words with me, the mother looked at me every time she came in or went out, but Frederica first entered into conversation with me; and, as I took up and glanced through some music that was lying around, she asked me if I played also. When I answered in the affirmative, she requested me to perform something; but the father would not allow this, for he maintained that it was proper to serve the guest first with some piece of music or a song.

She played several things with some readiness, in the style which one usually hears in the country, and on a harpsichord, too, that the schoolmaster should have tuned long since, if he had only had time. She was now also to sing a song, a certain tender-melancholy affair; but she did not succeed in it. She rose and said, smiling, or rather with that touch of serene joy which ever reposed on her countenance, "If I sing badly, I cannot lay the blame on the harpsichord or the schoolmaster: but let us go out of doors; then you shall hear my Alsatian and Swiss songs,—they sound much better."

During supper, a notion which had already struck me occupied me to such a degree, that I became meditative and silent; although the liveliness of the elder sister, and the gracefulness of the younger, shook me