ed to myself this well-founded apology, but in truth every
instinct of my nature impelled me to write, and at this very time Moritz
Hartmann was also urging me in his letters, while Mieczyslaw and others,
even my mother, encouraged me.

I began because I could not help it, and probably scarcely any work
ever stood more clearly arranged, down to the smallest detail, in its
creator's imagination, than the Egyptian Princess in mine when I took
up my pen. Only the first volume originally contained much more Egyptian
material, and the third I lengthened beyond my primary intention. Many
notes of that time I was unwilling to leave unused and, though the
details are not uninteresting, their abundance certainly impairs the
effect of the whole.

As for the characters, most of them were familiar.

How many of my mother's traits the beautiful, dignified Rhodopis
possessed! King Amasis was Frederick William IV, the Greek Phanes
resembled President Seiffart. Nitetis, too, I knew. I had often jested
with Atossa, and Sappho was a combination of my charming Frankfort
cousin Betsy, with whom I spent such delightful days in Rippoldsau,
and lovely Lina von Adelsson. Like the characters in the works of the
greatest of writers--I mean Goethe--not one of mine was wholly invented,
but neither was any an accurate portrait of the model.

I by no means concealed from myself the difficulties with which I had
to contend or the doubts the critics would express, but this troubled me
very little. I was writing the book only for myself and my mother, who
liked to hear every chapter read as it was finished. I often thought
that this novel might perhaps share the fate of my Poem of the World,
and find its way into the fire.

No matter. The greatest success could afford me no higher pleasure than
the creative labour. Those were happy evenings when, wholly lifted
out of myself, I lived in a totally different world, and, like a god,
directed the destinies of the persons who were my creatures. The love
scenes between Bartja and Sappho I did not invent; they came to me.
When, with brow damp with perspiration, I committed the first one to
paper in a single evening, I found the next morning, to my surprise,
that only a few touches were needed to convert it into a poem in
iambics.

This was scarcely permissible in a novel. But the scene pleased my
mother, and when I again brought the lovers together in the warm
stillness of the Egyptian night, and percei