again, as well as her sprightly, merry disposition, quite won my
heart. To live with her seemed an alluring prospect, especially
as my mother and Ottilie had joined her for a while. For the
first time a sister had treated me with some tenderness. When at
last I reached Leipzig at Christmas in the same year (1827), and
there found my mother with Ottilie and Cecilia (my half-sister),
I fancied myself in heaven. Great changes, however, had already
taken place. Louisa was betrothed to a respected and well-to-do
bookseller, Friedrich Brockhaus. This gathering together of the
relatives of the penniless bride-elect did not seem to trouble
her remarkably kind-hearted fiance. But my sister may have become
uneasy on the subject, for she soon gave me to understand that
she was not taking it quite in good part. Her desire to secure an
entree into the higher social circles of bourgeois life naturally
produced a marked change in her manner, at one time so full of
fun, and of this I gradually became so keenly sensible that
finally we were estranged for a time. Moreover, I unfortunately
gave her good cause to reprove my conduct. After I got to Leipzig
I quite gave up my studies and all regular school work, probably
owing to the arbitrary and pedantic system in vogue at the school
there.

In Leipzig there were two higher-class schools, one called St.
Thomas's School, and the other, and the more modern, St.
Nicholas's School. The latter at that time enjoyed a better
reputation than the former; so there I had to go. But the council
of teachers before whom I appeared for my entrance examination at
the New Year (1828) thought fit to maintain the dignity of their
school by placing me for a time in the upper third form, whereas
at the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden I had been in the second