amatory pulse still beating satisfactorily, he
proposed to the young lady, and, as it must be presumed that she had
already made up her own mind without any testing, he was accepted. On
March 28, 1837, they were married, and the wedded life that then began
was one of pure, unclouded happiness to the very end. Cecile
Mendelssohn was a beautiful, gentle-hearted, and loving wife, just the
one to give a weary and nervous artist in the home-life, with herself
and the children near him, the blessed solace of rest and calm that he
so needed. It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor,
and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cecile
was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose
mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with features of
striking beauty and delicacy; her hair was between brown and gold, but
the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant
roses of her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke
little, and never with animation, in a low, soft voice. Shakespeare's
words, "My gracious silence," applied to her no less than to the wife
of Coriolanus."

After giving up his official position at Duesseldorf, in 1835,
Mendelssohn was invited to become the conductor of the now famous
Gewandhaus concerts at Leipsic, a post which he gladly accepted, and
which, retained by him for many years, was to be one of the greatest
delights of his artistic life. Not only was he loved and appreciated
in Leipsic--far more than in Berlin, his own city--but he had here an
opportunity of assisting many composers and _virtuosi_, who otherwise
would have sought in vain for a hearing. Thus, after Liszt, when
visiting the town, had been first of all received with great coldness,
owing to the usual prices of admission to the concerts having been
raised, Mendelssohn set everything straight by having a soiree in his
honor at the Gewandhaus, where there were three hundred and fifty
people, orchestra, chorus, punch, pastry, Meeresstille Psalm, Bach's
Triple Concerto, choruses from St. Paul, Fantasia on Lucia, the Erl
King, the Devil and his Grandmother, the latter probably a mild
satirical reference to Liszt's stormy and often incoherent playing. It
is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz
there, as told in the "Memoirs" of the latter, spending ungrudgingly
long days in aiding in rehearsals for his "Romeo et Juliette," though