"Every day we experienced some new happiness, especially after our child was born. She was a lovable child; and yet it was a long time before I could learn to love her for her own sake. During the first years, I loved her because of her mother, and she pleased me only so far as she resembled her. It was, so to speak, only an additional charm of this dear woman's that she had given life to such a child. I tell this to you, that you may know what a boundless love filled me, and how it never grew cool or more rational with years. "Indeed, she even succeeded in displacing another passion, to which I had formerly given all my spare time, but which now scarcely ever manifested itself. Even in the cadet school, I had been an enthusiastic violinist, and believed that I could not live without music. And when I realized that my wife was a stranger to the true nature of music, it pained me for a moment. But I would have renounced as unnecessary or troublesome, anything in which she had no part. Indeed, I easily convinced myself that this lack was but one perfection the more. Her true, simple nature, always at one with itself, shrank from the mysterious depths, the spiritual twilight, into which music lures us. It troubled her that she could not find the key to this fascinating riddle; but she seemed to fear that she might be drawn into a moral perplexity which would admit of no redemption. It was not indifference toward the musical world, but rather a lack of sensitiveness, which barred her way to the heart of it. She thoroughly enjoyed a folk-song or dance melody. A Beethoven symphony pained her--indeed, could drive her to despair. "All her artistic sense was in her eyes. She enjoyed every visible thing with the most exquisite feeling, and would study the lines of a face, a landscape, or a building, for hours together. Her hand was well-trained, but she placed little value on her sketches and aquarelles. Her technical skill did not equal her power of artistic perception. Besides, within the limits of our country estate, amid entirely commonplace surroundings and unattractive people, she had little opportunity to perfect herself. "Thus, for different reasons, both our talents remained dormant. But, occasionally, the desire to take my violin from its case and play through my old favorites once again, would seize me like a physical necessity. This I would do in perfect secrecy in some distant part of the woods. When the longing was satisfied, and I returned to the house like some penitent sinner, we would both laugh if she chanced to meet me with the violin under my arm. She often implored me to ignore her weakness; perhaps I might cure her of it. But her untroubled cheerfulness was more to me than all the sonatas in the world.