r--help him dress, keep his room in order, and prepare his
breakfast."

"That meant that you should be his servant!" cried Goethe, indignant.

"Only in the morning," replied Moritz, smiling. "Evenings and nights
I should have the honor to be his amanuensis; I should look over the
studies of the scholars, and correct their exercises; and when I had
made sufficient progress, it should be my duty to give two hours to
different classes, and I should read aloud or play cards with the
director on leisure evenings. Besides, I was obliged to promise never
to leave the house without his permission; never to speak to, or hold
intercourse with, any one outside the hours of instruction. All these
conditions were written down, and signed by both parties, as if a
business contract."

"A transaction by which a human soul was bargained for!" thundered
Goethe. "Reveal to me, now, the name of this trader of souls, that I may
expose him to public shame!"

"He died a year since," replied Moritz, softened. "God summoned him
to judgment. When the physician announced to him that the cancer was
incurable, when he felt death approaching, he sent for me, and begged
my forgiveness, with tears and deep contrition. I forgave him, so let
me cease to recall the life I passed with him. By the sweat of my brow I
was compelled to serve him; for seven long years I was his slave. I sold
myself for the sake of knowledge, I was consoled by progress. I was the
servant, companion, jester, and slave of my tyrant, but I was also the
disciple, the priest of learning. In my own room my chains fell off. In
the lonely night-watches I communed with the great, the immortal spirits
of Horace, Virgil, and even the proud Caesar, and the divine Homer.
Those solitary but happy hours of the night are never to be forgotten,
never to be portrayed; they refreshed me for the trials of the day, and
enabled me to endure them! At the close of seven years I was prepared to
enter the university, and the bargain between my master and myself was
also at an end. Freed from my tyrant, I bent my steps toward Frankfort
University, to feel my liberty enchained anew. For seven years I had
been the slave of the director; now I became the slave of poverty,
forced to labor to live! Oh, I cannot recall those scenes! Suffice it to
say, that during one year I had no fixed abode, never tasted warm
food. But it is passed--I have conquered! After years of struggle, of
exertion, of silent misery