dancing with us, to Herr Guichard's tiny violin.

Warm as was my love for the beautiful Annchen, my adored one came near
getting a cold from it, for, rogue that I was, I hid her overshoes during
the lesson on one rainy Saturday evening, that I might have the pleasure
of taking them to her the next morning.

She looked at that time like the woman with whom I celebrated my silver
wedding two years ago, and certainly belonged to the same feminine genre,
which I value and place as high above all others as Simonides von Amorgos
preferred the beelike woman to every other of her sex: I mean the kind
whose womanliness and gentle charm touch the heart before one ever thinks
of intellect or beauty.

Our mother smiled at these affairs, and her daughters, as girls, gave her
no great trouble in guarding their not too impressionable hearts.

There was only one boy for whom Paula showed a preference, and that was
pretty blond Paul, our Martin's friend, comrade, and contemporary, the
son of our neighbour, the Privy-Councillor Seiffart; and we lived a good
deal together, for his mother and ours were bosom friends, and our house
was as open to him as his to us.

Paul was born on the same November day as my sister, though several years
earlier, and their common birthday was celebrated, while we were little,
by a puppet-show at the neighbour's, conducted by some master in the
business, on a pretty little stage in the great hall at the Seiffarts'
residence.

I have never forgotten those performances, and laugh now when I think of