In 1833 Mendelssohn accepted an official post offered him by the authorities of Düsseldorf, by which the entire musical arrangements of the town, church, theatre, and singing societies were put under his care. Immermann, the celebrated poet, being associated with him in the direction of the theatre. Things, however, did not go on very smoothly there. Mendelssohn found all the many worries of theatrical management--the engagement of singers and musicians, the dissensions to be arranged, the many tastes to be conciliated--too irksome, and he did not long retain this appointment; but the life among his friends at Düsseldorf was most delightful, and the letters written at this time are exceedingly lively and gay. It was here that he received the commission from the Cæcilia-Verein of Frankfort for, and commenced, his grand oratorio "St. Paul." The words for this, as also for the "Elijah" and "Hymn of Praise" afterward, he selected himself with the help of his friend Schubung, and they are entirely from the Bible--as he said, "The Bible is always the best of all." Circumstances prevented the oratorio being then produced at Frankfort, and the first public performance took place at the Lower Rhine Festival at Düsseldorf, in May, 1836. But his visits to Frankfort had a very important result in another way. Mendelssohn there met Mademoiselle Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a pastor of the French Reformed Church, and, though he had frequently indulged in the admiration of beautiful and clever women--which is allowable, and indeed an absolute necessity for a poet!--now for the first time he fell furiously in plain unmistakable and downright love. But it is more characteristic of the staid Teuton than the impulsive musician, that before plighting his troth to her he went away for a month's bathing at Scheveningen, in Holland, for the purpose of testing the strength of his affection by this absence. On his return, finding his amatory pulse still beating satisfactorily, he proposed to the young lady, and, as it must be presumed that she had already made up her own mind without any testing, he was accepted. On March 28, 1837, they were married, and the wedded life that then began was one of pure, unclouded happiness to the very end. Cécile Mendelssohn was a beautiful, gentle-hearted, and loving wife, just the one to give a weary and nervous artist in the home-life, with herself and the children near him, the blessed solace of rest and calm that he so needed. It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor, and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cécile was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with features of striking beauty and delicacy; her hair was between brown and gold, but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses of her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke