Our old hostess, when she comes to make my bed, is generally followed by her pet cat. Yesterday I was sitting in the great hall, and could hear the old woman pursue her avocation within. On a sudden, in great haste, and with an excitement quite unusual to her, she opens the door, and calls to me to come quickly and see a wonder. To my question what was the matter, she replied the cat was saying its prayers. Of the animal she had long observed, she told me, that it had as much sense as a Christian--but this was really a great wonder. I hastened to see it with my own eyes; and it was indeed strange enough. The bust stood on a high pedestal, and as there was a good length of the shoulders, the head stood rather high. Now the cat had sprung upon the table, and had placed her fore-feet on the breast of the god, and, stretching her body to its utmost length, just reached with her muzzle his sacred beard, which she was licking most ceremoniously; and neither by the exclamation of the hostess, nor my entrance into the room, was she at all disturbed. I left the good dame to her astonishment; and she afterwards accounted for puss's strange act of devotion, by supposing that this sharp-nosed cat had caught scent of the grease which had probably been transferred from the mould to the deep lines of the beard, and had there remained.
Of Tischbein I have much to say and to boast. In the first place, a thorough and original German, he has made himself entirely what he is. In the next place, I must make grateful mention of the friendly attentions he has shewn me throughout the time of his second stay in Rome. For he has had prepared for me a series of copies after the best masters, some in black chalk, others in sepia and water colours; which in Germany, when I shall be at a distance from the originals, will grow in value, and will serve to remind me of all that is rarest and best.
At the commencement of his career as an artist, when he set up as a portrait painter, Tischbein came in contact, especially in Munich, with distinguished personages, and in his intercourse with them his feeling of art has been strengthened and his views enlarged.
The second part of the "_Zerstrente Blatter_" (stray leaves) I have brought with me hither, and they are doubly welcome. What good influence this little book has had on me, even on the second perusal, Herder, for his reward, shall be circumstantially informed. Tischbein cannot conceive how anything so excellent could ever have been written by one who has never been in Italy.