fter sunset he
suddenly came sweeping across the mountains that lie to the north-east
of Munich. For months to come he laid me low, very low, and thus all the
fine plans that Claude and I had made for a regular correspondence, that
would keep us linked together at least mentally, came to naught. Letters
dictated to the kind and anxious watchers by our respective bedsides
were but poor substitutes for the minutely detailed accounts of our
doings that we usually exchanged, or for the heartfelt effusions that
our friendship prompted.

But to talk of one's illnesses is really a most unpardonable offence.
For all the purposes of description one can find quite enough of
weakness in man when he is strong and hearty, without going out of
one's way to ransack the sick-room for further evidence of his frailty.
So I will merely mention that I was and remained an invalid throughout
the greater part of the ensuing winter.

The truth concerning Claude's health was kept from me. I since knew that
he had passed through an alarming crisis; when the fever was at its
height, his mind had been wandering, and in his disconnected talk he had
alternately appealed to Olga in the tenderest language, and had shrunk
from her imaginary presence with aversion and terror. When calm returned
and comparative health, he would not speak of her. Something of the
shrinking remained.

"With you I could talk about her," he said in the first letter he
could write from Mentone, "but I must wait till I am stronger, and
particularly till I hear better accounts of you. It was an
unpleasant dream that--well--that Erlkoenig dream. Again and again I
cried out: 'Mein Vater, mein Vater!'--no help came--_her_ voice
pursued me--On we dashed fever-spurred, till I lay dead in _her_
arms.

"But, to be sure that is all 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' To
you, my dear fellow, I should only send pleasant visions, like
those I am revelling in here. A new world is every day unfolded
before me, a world vibrating with light and glowing with colour. I
have seen the woods and the hills and the waters before, but never
in their gala uniform, and I am simply dazzled. Where are my
beloved outlines? They seem merged in harmonies and swamped in
colours so glorious, that even I lose sight of them. Do you know,
my dear Felix, since I am here I feel there is in me the making of
a colourist, a germ