I well remember that the first time I was conscious of any feelings of love, these manifested themselves as pangs of jealousy, which had, however, nothing to do with real love:  this happened one evening when I called at the house.  The Countess kept me by her side in an ante-room, while the girls, beautifully dressed and gay, flirted in the reception-room with those hateful young noblemen.  All I had ever read in Hoffmann’s Tales of certain demoniacal intrigues, which until that moment had been obscure to me, now became really tangible facts, and I left Prague with an obviously unjust and exaggerated opinion of those things and those people, through whom I had suddenly been dragged into an unknown world of elementary passions.

On the other hand I had gained by my stay at Pravonin:  I had written poetry as well as musical compositions.  My musical work was a setting of Glockentone, a poem by the friend of my youth, Theodor Apel.  I had already written an aria for soprano which had been performed the winter before at one of the theatre concerts.  But my new work was decidedly the first vocal piece I had written with real inspiration; generally speaking, I suppose it owed its’ characteristics to the influence of Beethoven’s Liederkreis:  all the same, the impression that it has left on my mind is that it was absolutely part of myself, and pervaded by a delicate sentimentality which was brought into relief by the dreaminess of the accompaniment.  My poetical efforts lay in the direction of a sketch of a tragi-operatic subject, which I finished in its entirety in Prague under the title of Die Hochzeit (’The Wedding’).  I wrote it without anybody’s knowledge, and this was no easy matter, seeing that I could not write in my chilly little hotel-room, and had therefore to go to the house of Moritz, where I generally spent my mornings.  I remember how I used quickly to hide my manuscript behind the sofa as soon as I heard my host’s footsteps.

An extraordinary episode was connected with the plot of this work.

Already years ago I had come across a tragic story, whilst perusing Busching’s book on chivalry, the like of which I have never since read.  A lady of noble birth had been assaulted one night by a man who secretly cherished a passionate love for her, and in the struggle to defend her honour superhuman strength was given her to fling him into the courtyard below.  The mystery of his death remained unexplained until the day of his solemn obsequies, when the lady herself, who attended them and was kneeling in solemn prayer, suddenly fell forward and expired.  The mysterious strength of this profound and passionate story made an indelible impression upon my mind.  Fascinated, moreover, by the peculiar treatment of similar phenomena in Hoffmann’s Tales, I sketched a novel in which musical mysticism, which I still loved so deeply, played an important part.  The action was supposed to take place on the estate of a rich