and learning, this mutual labor, afforded us good entertainment.  Gretchen took part in it, and had many a pretty notion; so that we were all pleased, we may, indeed, say happy.  During the day she worked at the milliner’s:  in the evenings we generally met together, and our contentment was not even disturbed when at last the commissions for occasional poems began to leave off.  Still we felt hurt once, when one of them came back under protest, because it did not suit the party who ordered it.  We consoled ourselves, however, as we considered it our very best work, and could, therefore, declare the other a bad judge.  The cousin, who was determined to learn something at any rate, resorted to the expedient of inventing problems, in the solution of which we always found amusement enough; but, as they brought in nothing, our little banquets had to be much more frugally managed.

That great political object, the election and coronation of a king of Rome, was pursued with more and more earnestness.  The assembling of the electoral college, originally appointed to take place at Augsburg in the October of 1763, was now transferred to Frankfort; and both at the end of this year and in the beginning of the next, preparations went forward which should usher in this important business.  The beginning was made by a parade never yet seen by us.  One of our chancery officials on horseback, escorted by four trumpeters likewise mounted, and surrounded by a guard of infantry, read in a loud, clear voice at all the corners of the city, a prolix edict, which announced the forthcoming proceedings, and exhorted the citizens to a becoming deportment suitable to the circumstances.  The council was occupied with weighty considerations; and it was not long before the Imperial quartermaster, despatched by the hereditary grand marshal, made his appearance, in order to arrange and designate the residences of the ambassadors and their suites, according to the old custom.  Our house lay in the Palatine district, and we had to provide for a new but agreeable billetting.  The middle story, which Count Thorane had formerly occupied, was given up to a cavalier of the Palatinate; and as Baron von Koenigsthal, the Nuremburg charge-d’affaires, occupied the upper floor, we were still more crowded than in the time of the French.  This served me as a new pretext for being out of doors, and to pass the greater part of the day in the streets, that I might see all that was open to public view.

After the preliminary alteration and arrangement of the rooms in the town-house had seemed to us worth seeing; after the arrival of the ambassadors one after another, and their first solemn ascent in a body, on the 6th of February, had taken place,—­we admired the coming in of the imperial commissioners, and their ascent also to the Romer, which was made with great pomp.  The dignified person of the Prince of Lichtenstein made a good impression; yet connoisseurs maintained that the showy liveries had already been used on another occasion, and that this election and coronation would hardly equal in brilliancy that of Charles the Seventh.  We younger folks were content with what was before our eyes:  all seemed to us very fine, and much of it perfectly astonishing.