e. Through Devrient's mediation the drama was
accepted at Dresden and, although its reception by the public was at
first a divided one, it was at once recognized by friend and foe as a
literary and theatrical event of great significance. Though late, yet
all of a sudden, Ludwig, like Byron, awoke to find himself famous. When,
in 1852, he at last felt able to marry the woman of his love, his life
battle seemed to have been won for good. In the same year, 1852, he
published his second great drama, _The Maccabeans_, which, though not
attaining the popularity of the _Hereditary Forester_, did even more
perhaps to enhance the poet's fame. He could now count among the
steadily widening circle of his friends and admirers men like Julian
Schmidt, the prominent critic and editor, Gustav Freytag, and Berthold
Auerbach. At Auerbach's suggestion, Ludwig for awhile turned to
narrative literature and in the years 1855 and 1856 published his two
best stories, the _Heiterethei_ and _Between Heaven and Earth_--the
former again the more popular, the latter of higher literary merit.
These brief years from 1850 to 1856 were the zenith of Ludwig's career,
the height of his productivity as an artist and of his success and
happiness as a man. But already the shadows were gathering which were to
cast such a deep gloom over the last years of the poet's life.

In 1856 he was again stricken by what seemed to be the same mysterious
illness, never fully explained, that had befallen him in Leipzig. He
recovered, to be sure, for the time being, but his ailments returned
again and again. From about 1860 Ludwig practically never was a well
man. Confined to the house and soon to his bed, he slowly wasted away.
The tenderest care of his devoted wife and the affection of a few loyal
friends could do but little to relieve the most excruciating pain or to
keep away the actual want that began to knock at his door. Ludwig had
never learned to look upon his art as a commercial asset; his few
published works had never brought him much return, and his own slender
means had for some time been exhausted. Some gifts of honor were
bestowed upon the invalid by authors' societies and princely patrons,
but they came too late to prevent the inevitable. As late as 1859 Ludwig
still had hope for the future. "I see before me," he wrote in his diary,
"a veritable world of conceptions and forms which I might conquer if,
freed from the weight that keeps me down, I could take w