On his first journey to Switzerland, in company with the Stollbergs, he stayed at the hotel “Zum Schwert,” which is still standing. “The view of the lake of Zürich which we enjoyed from the Gate of the Sword is still before me.” On the Rigi they lodged in the “Ochsen,” and here from the window of his room, he sketched one Sunday morning the chapel of the “Madonna in the Snow.” In the evening they sat before the tavern door, under the sign, and enjoyed the music of the gurgling fountain and a substantial meal consisting of baked fish, eggs, and “sufficient” wine. On his second trip to Switzerland in 1779-80 we meet him, together with his noble friend the Duke of Weimar, in “The Eagle” at Constance, where Montaigne had lodged more than two hundred years before. We could mention many other hospitable thresholds which the great genius crossed: “The Red Cock” in Nuremberg, now an elegant building that reminds us little of the ancient low house with its large gate; or the “Hotel Victoria” in Venice, whose owner recalls to the modern traveler Goethe’s visit in a proud memorial tablet. “I lodged well in the ‘Königin von England,’ not far from the market-place, the greatest advantage of the inn.” But if he could find private quarters he preferred them to public-houses; so in Rome, where he was very glad to be received in the home of the painter Tischbein. There is sufficient evidence that Goethe took an artistic interest in signs, since he invented one himself for his puppet play “Hanswurst’s Hochzeit,” where we read the bewitching rhyme:-- “The wedding-feast is at the house Of mine host of the Golden Louse.” In “Truth and Poetry” he has given us the scheme of the play, which was never really executed. Like a born stage manager, he proposed a kind of turning stage: “The tavern with its glittering insignia was placed so that all its four sides could be presented to view by being turned upon a peg.” This patent idea of a turning inn showing its golden sign and its door open to travelers from the four quarters of the globe, might please the modern landlord too, even if he did not care exactly for the super-sign of a “Golden Louse,” “magnified by the solar-microscope!” CHAPTER XI THE ENGLISH SIGN AND ITS PECULIARITIES [Illustration: Lamb and Flag East Bath, England] CHAPTER XI THE ENGLISH SIGN AND ITS PECULIARITIES “Freedom I love, and form I hate And choose my lodgings at an inn.” WILLIAM SHENSTONE.