other of my comrades, and in choosing my associates I was mainly
influenced by the extent to which my new acquaintance appealed to
my eccentric imagination. At one time it would be poetising and
versifying that decided my choice of a friend; at another,
theatrical enterprises, while now and then it would be a longing
for rambling and mischief.

Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great change
came over our family affairs. My sister Rosalie, who had become
the chief support of our household, obtained an advantageous
engagement at the theatre in Prague, whither mother and children
removed in 1820, thus giving up the Dresden home altogether. I
was left behind in Dresden, so that I might continue to attend
the Kreuz Grammar School until I was ready to go up to the
university. I was therefore sent to board and lodge with a family
named Bohme, whose sons I had known at school, and in whose house
I already felt quite at home. With my residence in this somewhat
rough, poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my years
of dissipation began. I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement
necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my
sisters' companionship. On the contrary, I was plunged 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