for the obviously un-German name of my heroine by my infatuation
for Beethoven's Adelaide, whose tender refrain seemed to me the
symbol of all loving appeals. The course of my drama was now
characterised by the strange delays which took place in the
accomplishment of this last murder of vengeance, the chief
obstacle to which lay in the sudden passionate love which arose
between Leubald and Adelaide. I succeeded in representing the
birth and avowal of this love by means of extraordinary
adventures. Adelaide was once more stolen away by a robber-knight
from the lover who had been sheltering her. After Leubald had
thereupon sacrificed the lover and all his relations, he hastened
to the robber's castle, driven thither less by a thirst for blood
than by a longing for death. For this reason he regrets his
inability to storm the robber's castle forthwith, because it is
well defended, and, moreover, night is fast falling; he is
therefore obliged to pitch his tent. After raving for a while he
sinks down for the first time exhausted, but being urged, like
his prototype Hamlet, by the spirit of his father to complete his
vow of vengeance, he himself suddenly falls into the power of the
enemy during a night assault. In the subterranean dungeons of the
castle he meets Roderick's daughter for the first time. She is a
prisoner like himself, and is craftily devising flight. Under
circumstances in which she produces on him the impression of a
heavenly vision, she makes her appearance before him. They fall
in love, and fly together into the wilderness, where they realise
that they are deadly enemies. The incipient insanity which was
already noticeable in Leubald breaks out more violently after
this discovery, and everything that can be done to intensify it
is contributed by the ghost of his father, which continually
comes between the advances of the lovers. But this ghost is not