Franz went again and again, only to return home more in love than before. He fancied she had remarked him in the pit; he fancied the smile on her ruddy lips was a smile of encouragement addressed to him. He wrote her a burning love-letter, which she quietly burned. He waited impatiently for an answer, and went to the theatre expecting to read it in her looks. He could read nothing there but her loveliness. He wrote again; he wrote daily. He sent her quires of verses, and reams of “transcripts of his heart,” in the form of letters. He lived a blissful life of intense emotion. Fatherland was forgotten; the sword was no longer called upon; all tyrants were merged in the cruel one whom he adored. At length he gained admittance behind the scenes; nay, more—he was introduced to Clara. Alas! the shock his sense of loveliness received, when he beheld before him the fat, rouged, spangled woman, whom he had regarded as the incarnation of beauty! Her complexion—was this its red and white? were its roses and lilies gathered by the hare’s foot and the powder-puff? He could not speak; the springs of his eloquence were frozen; the delicate compliments he had so laboriously prepared, faded away in an unmeaning stammer. The first illusion of his life was gone. Perhaps there is nothing more striking to a young man than his first experience of the stage behind the scenes. That which, seen from the boxes, looks health and beauty, behind the scenes is weariness and paint; that which in the house is poetic, behind the scenes is horrible mechanism. What scene-painting is when looked at closely, that are actresses seen in the green-room. Franz was staggered, but not cured. He could not divest his heart of her image, and began to see her again as he had always seen her. Growing accustomed to the reality, he again beheld it in its ideal light; and as on the stage Clara was always enchanting, she carried with her some of the enchantment when she left it. Poor fellow! how patiently he stood there, hungering for the merest word—the simplest look! He saw others—a privileged few—speaking to her boldly; jesting with her; admiring her; giving their opinions respecting her costume, as if she were an ordinary woman, while he could only stammer out some meaningless remark. What would he have given to feel himself at ease with her, to be familiar, so that he might be seen to advantage!