No phantoms like those in Hoffmann’s Tales could have succeeded in producing the extraordinary state in which I came to my senses on noticing the astonishment of the audience at the end of the performance.  I heard no exclamations of disapproval, no hissing, no remarks, not even laughter; all I saw was intense astonishment at such a strange occurrence, which impressed them, as it did me, like a horrible nightmare.  The worst moment, however, came when I had to leave the pit and take my sister home.  To get up and pass through the people in the pit was horrible indeed.  Nothing, however, equalled the pain of coming face to face with the man at the door; the strange look he gave me haunted me ever afterwards, and for a considerable time I avoided the pit of the Leipzig theatre.

My next step was to find my sister, who had gone through the whole sad experience with infinite pity; in silence we drove home to be present at a brilliant family festivity, which contrasted with grim irony with the gloom of my bewilderment.

In spite of it all I tried to believe in myself, and thought I could find comfort in my overture to the Braut von Messina, which I believed to be a better work than the fatal one I had just heard.  A reinstatement, however, was out of the question, for the directors of the Leipzig theatre regarded me for a long time as a very doubtful person, in spite of Dorn’s friendship.  It is true that I still tried my hand at sketching out compositions to Goethe’s Faust, some of which have been preserved to this day:  but soon my wild student’s life resumed its sway and drowned the last remnant of serious musical study in me.

I now began to imagine that because I had become a student I ought to attend the University lectures.  From Traugott Krug, who was well known to me on account of his having suppressed the student’s revolt, I tried to learn the first principles of philosophy; a single lesson sufficed to make me give this up.  Two or three times, however, I attended the lectures on aesthetics given by one of the younger professors, a man called Weiss.  This perseverance was due to the interest which Weiss immediately aroused in me.  When I made his acquaintance at my uncle Adolph’s house, Weiss had just translated the metaphysics of Aristotle, and, if I am not mistaken, dedicated them in a controversial spirit to Hegel.

On this occasion I had listened to the conversation of these two men on philosophy and philosophers, which made a tremendous impression on me.  I remember that Weiss was an absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt manner of speaking; he had an interesting and pensive expression which impressed me immensely.  I recollect how, on being accused of a want of clearness in his writing and style, he justified himself by saying that the deep problems of the human mind could not in any case be solved by the mob.  This maxim, which struck me as being very plausible, I at once accepted as the principle for all my future writing.  I remember that my eldest brother Albert, to whom I once had to write for my mother, grew so disgusted with my letter and style that he said he thought I must be going mad.