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Doc. 256.] 445
CUNO’S EXPERIENCE.
any enemies; at all events he could not have made them by
the innocent, even sainted, tenor of his life ; and should he
have them, it would be impossible for them, as well as for
the scoffers who examine closely all modes of life different
from their own, to discover anything in him which they could
justly find fault with, or even calumniate. Before making his
more intimate acquaintance, I inquired most particularly after
these points especially among the Swedish merchants, among
whom there was one of his countrymen, Mr. Joachim Wretman,174
whom I could trust as imbued with Christianity, and a man
of intelligence.
5. My first acquaintance with him dates from November 4,
1768, when I happened to meet him in the French book-shop
of Mr. François Changuion. The old gentleman speaks both
French and High German, yet not very readily. Besides, he
is afflicted with the natural infirmity of stuttering ; yet at one
time more than at another. Our first meeting was pleasing
and sympathetic. He permitted me to call upon him at his
own house ; which I did on the following Sunday, and I con
tinued to do so almost every Sunday, after attending church
in the morning. He lodged near our old church in Calf-street
(Kälbergasse), where he had engaged two comfortable rooms.
One of my first questions was, whether he had no male
attendant to wait upon him in his old age, and to accompany
him on his journeys? He answered that he needed no one to
look after him, because his angel was ever with him, and
conversed and had intercourse with him. If another man had
uttered these words, he would have made me laugh ; but I
never thought of laughing when this venerable man, eighty
one years old, told me this ; he looked far too innocent, and
when he gazed upon me with his smiling blue eyes, which he
always did in conversing with me, it was as if truth itself
was speaking from them.
6. I often noticed with surprise how scoffers, who had
made their way into large societies where I had taken him,
and whose purpose it had been to make fun of the old gentle
man, forgot all their laughter and their intended scoffing, and
how they stood agape and listened to the most singular things
which he like an open-hearted child told about the spiritual
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