"No," he exclaimed in a loud voice, raising his head, and looking upward, "no, the gods will not abandon me! They will give me strength and health and a long life, that I may accomplish the task which my soul and mind and heart tell me is required at my hands. No, Parnassus stands before me, and I will climb it!" His beaming eye glanced upward in ecstasy and saw not the low dusty ceiling, the want and indigence by which he was surrounded. He gazed into immensity; the low ceiling opened to his view, and through it "he saw the heavens and the countenance of the blessed!" A loud noise in the street awakened him from his trance. It was the watchman blowing his horn and calling the hour in stentorian tones. "Four o'clock," murmured Schiller, "the night approaches its end!--and my candle also," he continued, smiling, as he looked at the brass candlestick, from the upper rim of which the softened tallow was falling in heavy drops, while the wick had sunk down into the liquid mass. Schiller shrugged his shoulders. "It appears that I must stop in the middle of my grand scene and go to bed. My good friend Streicher has in vain begged me to do so, through his musical messenger of love; and now a tallow-candle compels me to do so! What poor, miserable beings we men are! A trifling, inanimate, material thing has more power over us than the spirit, and while we oppose the latter we must submit to be overcome by the former! Therefore to bed, to bed! Farewell, my Posa! The poor human creature leaves you for a few hours, but the lofty human mind will soon return to you! Good-night, my Posa!" The wick of the miserable candle flared up once more and then expired with a crackling noise in the liquid tallow. "That is as it should be," laughed Schiller; "the poet, like the mule, must be able to find his way in the dark on the verge of an abyss!" He groped his way through the little room to his bedchamber, and undressed himself rapidly; and the loud, regular breathing soon announced that the young poet, Frederick Schiller, was wrapped in health-giving and refreshing slumber. CHAPTER II. THE TRIALS OF LIFE. Frederick Schiller still slept, although the pale winter sun of December stood high in the heavens, and the streets of the little city of Mannheim had long since awakened to new life and activity. Frederick Schiller still slept, and, worn out by his long vigils, his work, and his cough, might have slept on for a long time, had he not been aroused by a loud knocking at the door, and an audible step in the adjoining room. A young man stood on the threshold of the bedchamber and wished Schiller a hearty good-morning. "I can account for this, Fritz," said he, raising his finger threateningly--"not into bed at night, not out of bed in the morning! Did I not send you my watchman as a love-messenger? But he has already complained to me that it was unavailing."