ary difficulties which he
had to encounter during these ten months, he was also dreaming of an
appointment as _Kapellmeister_ (orchestral director) or as musical
composer to a theatre. He says upon this point in a letter to Hippel,
of date March 12, 1815, "I cannot anyhow cease to interest myself in
art; and had I not to care for a dearly beloved wife, and were it not
my duty to try and procure her a comfortable life after what she has
gone through with me, I would rather become a music schoolmaster again
than let myself be stamped in the juristic fulling-mill."[23] After
more than one disappointment in his efforts to secure permanent and
remunerative employment, in which efforts he was assisted by his
influential friend Hippel, he became a clerk, as already stated, in the
department of the Minister of Justice.

In his social relations Hoffmann was more fortunate. He now enjoyed the
close companionship of Hitzig again, and through Hitzig was introduced
into a select circle which counted amongst its members such men as
Fouque (author of _Undine_), Chamisso (of _Peter Schlemihl_ fame),
Contessa, Koreff, Tieck, Bernhardi, Devrient, and others. The harassing
tumultuous days he had passed through during the last eight years had
now begun to make him gentler and more modest; his character was more
tempered, and his behaviour more subdued. His good-nature too took such
a prominent place in the qualities he displayed that Hitzig's children
were quite delighted with their father's newly arrived friend; for them
Hoffmann wrote the pleasant little fairy tale _Nussknacker und
Maeusekoenig_ (Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Before the end of
1815 he had finished the second part of the _Elixiere des Teufels_, to
which he himself attached no value, since its connection with the first
part was broken; its author's ideas had got into another track;
feelings and circumstances were changed. Still less than Schiller with
_Don Carlos_. did Hoffmann succeed in making an artificial junction
between the two parts of his work atone for its breach of artistic
unity; he even said later of the first part, "I ought not to have had
it printed." Besides this second part of the _Elixiere_, he also wrote
the concluding pieces of the _Fantasiestuecke_, namely, _Die Abenteuer
der Sylvesternacht_, which owes its existence to Chamisso's _Peter
Schlemihl_ and to Chamisso himself, who is portrayed in the work; and
also _Die Correspondenz des Kapellmeist