eyes had an innocent, dreamy, half-melancholy expression, which I was not
the only person who found unspeakably charming. Afterwards it seemed to
me, in recalling her look, that she beheld the fair boy Death, whose
lowered torch she was so soon to follow.

About the time that I returned to Berlin seriously ill she had just left
boarding-school, and it is difficult to describe the impression she made
when I saw her for the first time; yet I found in the opening rose all
that had lent the bud so great a charm.

I am not writing a romance, and shall not permit the heart to beautify or
transfigure the image memory retains, yet I can assert that Nenny lacked
nothing which art and poesy attribute to the women who allegorically
personate the magic of Nature or the fairest emotions and ideals of the
human soul. In this guise poet, sculptor, or artist might have
represented Imagination, the Fairy Tale, Lyric Poetry, the Dream, or
Compassion.

The wealth of raven hair, the delicate lines of the profile, the scarlet
lips, the pearly teeth, the large, long-lashed blue eyes, whose colour
formed a startling contrast to the dark hair, the slender little hands
and dainty feet, united to form a beauty whose equal Nature rarely
produces. And this fair body contained a tender, loving, pure, childlike
heart, which longed for higher gifts than human life can bestow.

Thus she appeared before me like an apparition from a world opened only
to the poet. She came often, for she loved my mother, and rarely
approached my couch without a flower, a picture which pleased her,
or a book containing a poem which she valued.