spared her as much as possible.  After a few weeks I thought I might consider the period of uneasiness past, but was surprised to find the situation growing worse again without any apparent reason.  Minna then told me of some advantageous offers she had received from different theatres, and astonished me one day by announcing her intention of taking a short pleasure trip with a girl friend and her family.  As I felt obliged to avoid putting any restraint upon her, I offered no objection to the execution of this project, which entailed a week’s separation, but accompanied her back to her parents myself, promising to await her return quietly at Blasewitz.  A few days later her eldest sister called to ask me for the written permission required to make out a passport for my wife.  This alarmed me, and I went to Dresden to ask her parents what their daughter was about.  There, to my surprise, I met with a very unpleasant reception; they reproached me coarsely for my behaviour to Minna, whom they said I could not even manage to support, and when I only replied by asking for information as to the whereabouts of my wife, and about her plans for the future, I was put off with improbable statements.  Tormented by the sharpest forebodings, and understanding nothing of what had occurred, I went back to the village, where I found a letter from Konigsberg, from Moller, which poured light on all my misery.  Herr Dietrich had gone to Dresden, and I was told the name of the hotel at which he was staying.  The terrible illumination thrown by this communication upon Minna’s conduct showed me in a flash what to do.  I hurried into town to make the necessary inquiries at the hotel mentioned, and found that the man in question had been there, but had moved on again.  He had vanished, and Minna too!  I now knew enough to demand of the Fates why, at such an early age, they had sent me this terrible experience which, as it seemed to me, had poisoned my whole existence.

I sought consolation for my boundless grief in the society of my sister Ottilie and her husband, Hermann Brockhaus, an excellent fellow to whom she had been married for some years.  They were then living at their pretty summer villa in the lovely Grosser Garten, near Dresden.  I had looked them up at once the first time I went to Dresden, but as I had not at that time the slightest idea of how things were going to turn out, I had told them nothing, and had seen but little of them.  Now I was moved to break my obstinate silence, and unfold to them the cause of my misery, with but few reservations.

For the first time I was in a position gratefully to appreciate the advantages of family intercourse, and of the direct and disinterested intimacy between blood relations.  Explanations were hardly necessary, and as brother and sister we found ourselves as closely linked now as we had been when we were children.  We arrived at a complete understanding without having to explain what we meant; I was unhappy, she was happy; consolation and help followed as a matter of course.