I visited Kallenberg one lovely evening in the month of May. The high ground near the castle was steeped in perfume from the blossoms of the spring, and the leaves of the pink acacia cast their checkered shadows on the dewy grass. Beneath me, in the shady valley, deer bounded fearless from their covert in the wood, following greedily with their eyes the bright figure of that lady who greets with kind and hospitable welcome all who enter the precincts of the castle--men, and all living things. The repose of evening lay on hill and dale; no sound was heard save the occasional roll of thunder from afar above the bright and cheerful landscape. On this very evening, leaning against the wall of the ancient castle, your highness gazed with troubled aspect into the gloomy distance. What my noble prince then said about the conflicts of the last few years, the relaxed and utterly despondent temper of the nation, and the duty of authors, at such a time especially, to show the people, for their encouragement and elevation, as in a mirror, what they are capable of doing--those were golden words, revealing a great grasp of intellect and a warm heart, and their echo will not soon die away in the heart of him who heard them. It was on that evening the desire awoke within me to grace with your highness's name the work whose plan had been already in my mind. Nearly two years have passed since then. A terrible war is raging, and Germans look with gloomy apprehension to the future of their fatherland. At such a time, when the strongest political feelings agitate the life of every individual, that spirit of cheerful tranquillity, so needful to an author for the artistic moulding of his creations, readily forsakes his writing-table. It is long, alas! since the German author has enjoyed it. He has far too little interest in home and foreign life; he wants that composure and proud satisfaction which the writers of other countries feel in dwelling on the past and present of their nation, while he has enough and to spare of humiliation on account of his country, of wishes unfulfilled and passionate indignation. At such a time, in drawing an imaginative picture, not love alone, but hatred too, flows freely and readily from the pen--practical tendencies are apt to usurp the place of poetic fancy; and, instead of a genial tone and temper, the reader is apt to find an unpleasing mixture of blunt reality and artificial sentiment. Surrounded by such dangers, it becomes twofold the duty of an author carefully to avoid distortion in the outline of his pictures, and to keep his own soul free from unjust prepossession. To give the highest expression to the beautiful in its noblest form is not the privilege of every time; but, in all times alike, it is the duty of the writer of fiction to be true to his art and to his country. To seek for this truth, and where found to exhibit it, I hold to be the duty of my own life.