In the _coulisses_, to which he was admitted by special favour, he observed the ways of actors--an experience which supplied the materials for the portraiture of the actor's life in _Wilhelm Meister_.

A remark which he makes in connection with the French theatre is a significant commentary on his respective relations to his father and mother, and indicates the atmosphere of evasion which permanently pervaded the household.

It was against the will of his father, but with the connivance of his mother, that he paid his visits to the theatre and cultivated the society of the actors, and it was only by the consideration that his son's knowledge of French was thus improved that the practical father was reconciled to the delinquency.

The direct results of his intercourse with the French soldiery on Goethe's development were at once abiding and of high importance.

It extended his knowledge of men and the world, and, more specifically, it gave him that interest in French culture and that insight into the French mind which he possessed in a degree beyond any of his contemporaries.
But the most notable experience of these early years under his father's roof still remains to be mentioned.