So this beginning of a beautiful and serious love story became a swiftly
passing dream. Its course had been happy, but the end dealt my heart a
blow which healed very slowly. It opened afresh when in her parents'
house, where during my convalescence I was a frequent guest, I myself
advised her to marry a young land-owner, who eagerly wooed her. She
became his wife, but only a year later entered that other world which
she had regarded as her true home even while here. Her beloved image
occupies the most sacred place in the shrine of my memory.

I denied myself the pleasure of introducing her character in one of my
novels, for I felt that if I should succeed in limning it faithfully the
modern reader would be justified in considering her an impossible figure
for our days. She would perhaps have suited a fairy tale; and when I
created Bianca in The Elixir I gave her Nenny's form. The gratitude
which I owe her will accompany me to my life's end, for it was she who
brought to my sick-room the blue sky, sunlight, and the thousand gifts of
a blooming Garden of Eden.




CHAPTER XXV.

THE SUMMERS OF MY CONVALESCENCE.

While I spent the winters in my mother's house in industrious work and
pleasant social life, the summers took me out of the city into the open
air. I always went first with my faithful nurse and companion to
Wildbad; the remainder of the warm season I spent on the Elbe,
sometimes with my mother, sometimes with my aunt.