which had obtained
complete mastery over me. Here I could not shake off the delightful
memories of these evenings because I did not strive to battle with them.

I am not without talent for drawing, and even at that time it was an easy
matter to reproduce anything which had caught my eye, not only
distinctly, but sometimes attractively and with a certain degree of
fidelity to nature. So my note-book was filled with figures which amazed
me when I saw them afterwards, for my excited imagination had filled page
after page with a perfect Witch's Sabbath of compositions, in which the
oddest scrolls and throngs of genii blended with flowers, buds, and all
sorts of emblems of love twined around initial letters or the picture of
the person who had captured my heart at a time so inopportune.

I owe the suggestion of some verses which were written at that time to
the memory of a dream. I was on the back of a swan, which bore me through
the air, and on another swan flying at my side sat Clara. Our hands were
clasped. It was delightful until I bent to kiss her; then the swan I rode
melted into mist, and I plunged headlong down, falling, falling, until I
woke.

I had this dream on the Friday before the beginning of the week in which
the first examination was to take place; and it is worthy of mention, for
it was fulfilled.

True, I needed no prophetic vision to inform me that this time of
happiness was drawing to a close. I had long known that the company was
to remove from Kottbus to Guben, but I hoped that the separation would be
followed by a speedy meeting.

It was certainly fortunate that she was going, yet the parting was hard
to bear; for the evening hours I had spent with her in innocent mirth and
the interchange of all that was best in our hearts and minds were filled
with exquisite enjoyment. The fact that our intercourse was in a certain
sense forbidden fruit merely doubled its charm.

How cautiously I had glided along in the shadows of the houses, how
anxiously I had watched the light in the minister's study opposite, when
I went home!

True, he would have seen nothing wrong or even unseemly, save perhaps the
kiss which Clara gave me the last time she lighted me down stairs, yet
that would have been enough to shut me out of the examination. Ah! yes,
it was fortunate that she was going.

March had come, the sun shone brightly, the air was as warm as in May,
and I had carried the mother and daughter some violets w