As in Strassburg, it was at a _table d'hote_[120] that Goethe made the acquaintance of the youths who, like himself, were idling away their time in Wetzlar. To relieve the tedium of the place[121] they had formed a fantastic society on a feudal model, with a Grand-master, Chancellor, and all the other subordinate officials--the point of the jest being that each associate bore the name and played the part of his office and title. For frolic of all kinds Goethe was ever ready; his taste for practical joking, indeed, as we shall see, occasionally led him to play questionable pranks. Under the name of Goetz von Berlichingen he became a member of the brotherhood, and, according to his own account, he contributed to the gaiety of the proceedings. Among the company, however, there were a few serious persons with tastes kindred to his own, and he specially names F.W. Gotter, Secretary of the Gotha Legation at Wetzlar, as one who, like Salzmann and Schlosser, impressed him by his character and talent. In English literature they had a common interest, and, as a poem which both admired, they each made a translation of Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_--Gotter, according to Goethe, being the more successful in the attempt. Gotter was thus still another of those grave counsellors whom Goethe had the good fortune to discover and attach to himself amid the distracting frivolities of every society he frequented.[122] [Footnote 120: In the _Kronprinz_, the principal hotel in the town.] [Footnote 121: Goethe's own lodging (still shown) was in the _Gewandsgasse_, a narrow, dirty street, whence sun or moon could be seen at no season of the year.] [Footnote 122: In his contemporary letters, Goethe does not always speak of Gotter so favourably as he does in his Autobiography.] "What happened to me in Wetzlar," Goethe writes in his Autobiography, "is of no great significance." But posterity has thought differently, and, if we are to judge by the consequences of what, happened to him in Wetzlar, both for himself and for the world, posterity is right.[123] Be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first hand leaves us in no doubt that, but for his Wetzlar experience, one of the most remarkable phases in Goethe's development would not have found expression, and one resounding note in European literature would have been unheard. [Footnote 123: An exhaustive account of Goethe's sojourn in Wetzlar will be found in W. Herbst's _Goethe in Wetzlar_, 1772. _Vier Monate aus des Dichters Jugendleben_, Gotha, 1881.]