but what the duty
of entering more deeply into the science which I had chosen required.

The childish faith which Feuerbach's teachings had threatened to destroy
seemed to gaze loyally at me with my mother's eyes. I felt that Pernice
was right--it was the warm heart, not the cool head, which should deal
with these matters, and I left the church, which I had entered merely to
shorten an hour, feeling as if released from a burden.

Our return home was pleasant, and I began to attend the law lectures at
Gottingen with tolerable regularity.

I was as full of life, and, when occasion offered, as reckless, as ever,
though a strange symptom began to make itself unpleasantly felt. It
appeared only after severe exertion in walking, fencing, or dancing, and
consisted of a peculiar, tender feeling in the soles of my feet, which I
attributed to some fault of the shoemaker, and troubled myself the less
about it because it vanished soon after I came in.

But the family of Professor Baum, the famous surgeon, where I was very
intimate, had thought ever since my return from the Christmas vacation
that I did not look well.

With Marianne, the second daughter of this hospitable household, a
beautiful girl of remarkably brilliant mind, I had formed so intimate,
almost fraternal, a friendship, that both she and her warm-hearted
mother called me "Cousin Schorge."

Frau Dirichlet, the wife of the great mathematician, the sister of Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, in whose social and musical home I spent hours of
pleasure which will never be forgotten, also expressed her anxiety about
my loss of flesh. When a girl she had often met my mother, and at my
first visit she won my affection by her eager praise of that beloved
woman's charms.

As the whole family were extremely musical they could afford themselves
and their friends a great deal of enjoyment. I have never heard Joachim
play so entrancingly as to her accompaniment. At a performance in her
own house, where the choruses from Cherubini's Water-Carrier were given,
she herself had rehearsed the music with those who were to take part,
and to hear her play on the piano was a treat.

This lady, a remarkable woman in every respect, who gave me many tokens
of maternal affection, insisted on the right to warn me. She did this by
reminding me, with delicate feminine tact, of my mother when she heard
of a wager which I now remember with grave disapproval. This was to
empty an immense number o