throw the external world and my own body into the background. Only when
the suffering becomes very intense, the whole being must of necessity
yield to it.

During the hours of the night which followed these evening visits I often
succeeded in working earnestly for two or three hours in preparation for
the examination. During my recitations, however, weariness asserted
itself, and even more strongly the new feeling which had obtained
complete mastery over me. Here I could not shake off the delightful
memories of these evenings because I did not strive to battle with them.

I am not without talent for drawing, and even at that time it was
an easy matter to reproduce anything which had caught my eye, not only
distinctly, but sometimes attractively and with a certain degree of
fidelity to nature. So my note-book was filled with figures which amazed
me when I saw them afterwards, for my excited imagination had filled page
after page with a perfect Witch's Sabbath of compositions, in which the
oddest scrolls and throngs of genii blended with flowers, buds, and all
sorts of emblems of love twined around initial letters or the picture of
the person who had captured my heart at a time so inopportune.

I owe the suggestion of some verses which were written at that time to
the memory of a dream. I was on the back of a swan, which bore me
through the air, and on another swan flying at my side sat Clara. Our
hands were clasped. It was delightful until I bent to kiss her; then the
swan I rode melted into mist, and I plunged headlong down, falling,
falling, until I woke.

I had this dream on the Friday before the beginning of the week in which
the first examination was to take place; and it is worthy of mention, for