The queen pursued her way:  the country people dispersed, and the city was soon quiet as ever.  Before the queen’s arrival, the very reasonable regulation had been made, that no deformed persons, no cripples nor disgusting invalids, should show themselves on her route.  People joked about this; and I made a little French poem in which I compared the advent of Christ, who seemed to wander upon earth particularly on account of the sick and the lame, with the arrival of the queen, who scared these unfortunates away.  My friends let it pass:  a Frenchman, on the contrary, who lived with us, criticised the language and metre very unmercifully, although, as it seemed, with too much foundation; and I do not remember that I ever made a French poem afterwards.

No sooner had the news of the queen’s happy arrival rung from the capital, than it was followed by the horrible intelligence, that, owing to an oversight of the police during the festal fireworks, an infinite number of persons, with horses and carriages, had been destroyed in a street obstructed by building materials, and that the city, in the midst of the nuptial solemnities, had been plunged into mourning and sorrow.  They attempted to conceal the extent of the misfortune, both from the young royal pair and from the world, by burying the dead in secret; so that many families were convinced only by the ceaseless absence of their members that they, too, had been swept off by this awful event.  That, on this occasion, those ghastly figures in the grand saloon again came vividly before my mind, I need scarcely mention; for every one knows how powerful certain moral impressions are when they embody themselves, as it were, in those of the senses.

This occurrence was, however, destined moreover to place my friends in anxiety and trouble by means of a prank in which I indulged.  Among us young people who had been at Leipzig, there had been maintained ever afterwards a certain itch for imposing on and in some way mystifying one another.  With this wanton love of mischief I wrote to a friend in Frankfort (he was the one who had amplified my poem on the cake-baker Hendel, applied it to Medon, and caused its general circulation) a letter dated from Versailles, in which I informed him of my happy arrival there, my participation in the solemnities, and other things of the kind, but at the same time enjoined the strictest secrecy.  I must here remark, that, from the time of that trick which had caused us so much annoyance, our little Leipzig society had accustomed itself to persecute him from time to time with mystifications, and this especially as he was the drollest man in the world, and was never more amiable than when he was discovering the cheat into which he had deliberately been led.  Shortly after I had written this letter, I went on a little journey, and remained absent about a fortnight.  Meanwhile the news of that disaster had reached Frankfort:  my friend believed me in