sight; if anyone noticed this he smiled and looked confused, but not
annoyed. His little Werther romance he had lived at an early age in
Bonn. In Vienna, he is said to have had more than one love affair and
to have made an occasional conquest which would have been difficult
if not impossible to many an Adonis."

Weber's "Freischütz" doubtless owes much of its beauty to the fact
that it was written but a few months before the composer's marriage.
In one of his letters to his betrothed he writes, "Yesterday I
composed all the forenoon and thought of you _very often_, for I was
at work on a scene of _Agatha_, in which I still cannot attain all the
fire, longing, and passion that vaguely float before me." And his son
testifies that Weber's love influenced all his work at the time. "It
was the reason," he says, "that Weber took to heart, above everything
else, the part of _Aennchen_, in which he saw an embodiment of his
bride's special talent and characteristics, and it was under the
fostering stimulus of this warm feeling that he allowed those parts of
the opera in which _Aennchen_ appears to ripen first. The first note
which he wrote down for the 'Freischütz' belongs in the duo between
_Aennchen_ and _Agatha_." He adds that his father, while composing,
actually saw his bride in his mind's eye, and heard her sing his
melodies, and accordingly as this imaginary vocalist nodded approval
or shook her head, he was led to retain or reject certain musical
ideas.

Schumann's letters contain a superabundance of evidence showing how
love suggested to him immortal musical thoughts. "I have discovered,"
he writes to his bride, "that nothing transports the imagination so
readily as expectation and longing for something, as was again the
case during the last few days, when I was awaiting a letter from you,