into a busy, restless life, full of rough horseplay and of quarrels.  Nevertheless, it was there that I began to experience the influence of the gentler sex in a manner hitherto unknown to me, as the grown-up daughters of the family and their friends often filled the scanty and narrow rooms of the house.  Indeed, my first recollections of boyish love date from this period.  I remember a very beautiful young girl, whose name, if I am not mistaken, was Amalie Hoffmann, coming to call at the house one Sunday.  She was charmingly dressed, and her appearance as she came into the room literally struck me dumb with amazement.  On other occasions I recollect pretending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that I might be carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they thought, the only remedy for my condition.  And I repeated this, because I found, to my surprise, that their attention under these circumstances brought me into closer and more gratifying proximity with them.

The most important event during this year of separation from my family was, however, a short visit I paid to them in Prague.  In the middle of the winter my mother came to Dresden, and took me hack with her to Prague for a week.  Her way of travelling was quite unique.  To the end of her days she preferred the more dangerous mode of travelling in a hackney carriage to the quicker journey by mail-coach, so that we spent three whole days in the bitter cold on the road from Dresden to Prague.  The journey over the Bohemian mountains often seemed to be beset with the greatest dangers, but happily we survived our thrilling adventures and at last arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into entirely new surroundings.

For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic attraction for me.  The foreign nationality, the broken German of the people, the peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines, the harp-girls and musicians, and finally, the ever present signs of Catholicism, its numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on me a strangely exhilarating impression.  This was probably due to my craze for everything theatrical and spectacular, as distinguished from simple bourgeois customs.  Above all, the antique splendour and beauty of the incomparable city of Prague became indelibly stamped on my fancy.  Even in my own family surroundings I found attractions to which I had hitherto been a stranger.  For instance, my sister Ottilie, only two years older than myself, had won the devoted friendship of a noble family, that of Count Pachta, two of whose daughters, Jenny and Auguste, who had long been famed as the leading beauties of Prague, had become fondly attached to her.  To me, such people and such a connection were something quite novel and enchanting.  Besides these, certain beaux esprits of Prague, among them W. Marsano, a strikingly handsome and charming man, were frequent visitors at our house.  They often earnestly discussed the tales of Hoffmann, which at that date were comparatively new, and had created some sensation.  It was now that I made my first though rather superficial acquaintance with this romantic visionary, and so received a stimulus which influenced me for many years even to the point of infatuation, and gave me very peculiar ideas of the world.