the impulse of self-expression took this didactic turn, which is very prominent also in his correspondence.  Within the year he was betrothed to a member of this informal class, Wilhelmina von Zenge, the daughter of an officer.  The question of a career now crowded out his interest in study; in August, 1800, as a step toward the solution of this problem, Kleist returned to Berlin and secured a modest appointment in the customs department.  He found no more satisfaction in the civil than in his former military service, and all manner of vague plans, artistic, literary and academic, occupied his mind.  Intensive study of Kant’s philosophy brought on an intellectual crisis, in which the ardent student found himself bereft of his fond hope of attaining to absolute truth.  Meanwhile the romantic appeal of Nature, first heeded on a trip to Wuerzburg, and the romantic lure of travel, drew the dreamer irresistibly away from his desk.  His sister Ulrica accompanied him on a journey that began in April, 1801, and brought them, by a devious route, to Paris in July.  By this time Kleist had become clearly conscious of his vocation; the strong creative impulse that had hitherto bewildered him now found its proper vent in poetic expression, and he felt himself dedicated to a literary career.  With characteristic secretiveness he kept hidden, even from his sister, the drama at which he was quietly working.

Absorbed in his new ambition, Kleist found little in Paris to interest him.  He felt the need of solitude for the maturing of his plans, and with the double object of seeking in idyllic pursuits the inspiration of Nature and of earning leisure for writing, he proposed to his betrothed that she join him secretly in establishing a home upon a small farm in Switzerland.  When Wilhelmina found it impossible to accept this plan, Kleist coldly severed all relations with her.  He journeyed to Switzerland in December, 1801, and in Bern became acquainted with a group of young authors, the novelist Heinrich Zschokke, the publisher Heinrich Gessner, and Ludwig Wieland, son of the famous author of Oberon.  To these sympathetic friends he read his first tragedy, which, in its earlier draft, had a Spanish setting, as The Thierrez Family or The Ghonorez Family, but which, on their advice, was given a German background.  This drama Gessner published for Kleist, under the title The Schroffenstein Family, in the winter of 1802-03.  It had no sooner appeared than the author felt himself to have outgrown its youthful weaknesses of imitation and exaggeration.  Another dramatic production grew directly out of the discussions of this little circle.  The friends agreed, on a wager, to put into literary form the story suggested by an engraving that hung in Zschokke’s room.  By common consent the prize was awarded to Kleist’s production, his one comedy, The Broken Jug.