Mit William Makepeace Thackeray u.a.

Of course I remember very well the perturbation of spirit with which, as a lad of nineteen, I received the long expected intimation that the Herr Geheimrath would see me on.. a morning. This notable audience took place in a little antechambre of [115] his private apartments, covered all round with antique casts and bas-reliefs. He was habited in a long grey or drab redingot, with a white neckcloth and a red ribbon in his buttonhole. He kept his hands behind his back, just as in Rauch's statuette. His complexion was very bright, clear, and rosy. His eyes extraordinarily dark, piercing, and brilliant. I felt quite afraid before them, and recollected comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called Melmoth the Wanderer, which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago; eyes of an individual who had made a bargain with a Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained the eyes in all their awful splendour. I fancied Goethe must have been still more handsome as an old man than even in the days of his youth. His voice was very rich and sweet. He asked me questions about myself, which I answered as best I could. I recollect I was at first astonished, and then somewhat relieved, when I found he spoke French with not a good accent ....

Any of us who had books or magazines from England sent them to him, and he examined them eagerly.Frazer's Magazine had lately come out, and I remember he was interested in those admirable outline portraits which appeared for awhile in its pages. But there was one, a very ghastly caricature of Mr. R-, as Madame de Goethe told me, he shut up and put away from him angrily. ›They [116] would make me look like that‹, he said; though in truth I can fancy nothing more serene majestic, and healthy looking, than the grand old Goethe.