FOURTH BOOK.

However much inconvenience the quartering of the French had caused us, we had become so accustomed to it, that we could not fail to miss it; nor could we children fail to feel as if the house were deserted.  Moreover, it was not decreed that we should again attain perfect family unity.  New lodgers were already bespoken; and after some sweeping and scouring, planing, and rubbing with beeswax, painting and varnishing, the house was completely restored again.  The chancery-director Moritz, with his family, very worthy friends of my parents, moved in.  He was not a native of Frankfort, but an able jurist and man of business, and managed the legal affairs of many small princes, counts, and lords.  I never saw him otherwise than cheerful and pleasant, and diligent with his law-papers.  His wife and children, gentle, quiet, and benevolent, did not indeed increase the sociableness of our house; for they kept to themselves:  but a stillness, a peace, returned, which we had not enjoyed for a long time.  I now again occupied my attic-room, in which the ghosts of the many pictures sometimes hovered before me; while I strove to frighten them away by labor and study.

The counsellor of legation, Moritz, a brother of the chancellor, came from this time often to our house.  He was even more a man of the world, had a handsome figure, while his manners were easy and agreeable.  He also managed the affairs of different persons of rank, and on occasions of meetings of creditors and imperial commissions frequently came into contact with my father.  They had a high opinion of each other, and commonly stood on the side of the creditors; though they were generally obliged to perceive, much to their vexation, that a majority of the agents on such occasions are usually gained over to the side of the debtors.

The counsellor of legation readily communicated his knowledge, was fond of mathematics; and, as these did not occur in his present course of life, he made himself a pleasure by helping me on in this branch of study.  I was thus enabled to finish my architectural sketches more accurately than heretofore, and to profit more by the instruction of a drawing-master, who now also occupied us an hour every day.

This good old man was indeed only half an artist.  We were obliged to draw and combine strokes, from which eyes and noses, lips and ears, nay, at last, whole faces and heads, were to arise; but of natural or artistic forms there was no thought.  We were tormented a long while with this quid pro quo of the human figure; and when the so-called Passions of Le Brun were given us to copy, it was supposed at last that we had made great progress.  But even these caricatures did not improve us.  Then we went off to landscapes, foliage, and all the things which in ordinary instruction are practised without consistency or method.  Finally we dropped into close imitation and neatness of strokes, without troubling ourselves about the merit or taste of the original.