Let us dwell for a moment longer on this flower. In Spielhagen's _Problematische Naturen_, one of the characters says: "You remember the blue flower in Novalis's tale? Do you know what it is? It is the flower which no mortal eye has seen, yet the fragrance of which fills the world. Not every creature is delicately enough organised to perceive its perfume; but the nightingale is intoxicated with it when she sings and wails and sobs in the moonlight and the grey dawn; and so were, and so are, all the foolish human beings who, in prose and verse, have poured, and are pouring, forth their woes to Heaven; and so, too, are millions more, to whom no God has granted the power to say what they suffer, and who look up in dumb anguish to the Heaven which has no mercy upon them. And alas! for this suffering there is no cure--none except death. For him who has once inhaled the fragrance of the blue flower there is not a peaceful hour left in life. Like a murderer, or like one who has turned away the Lord from his door, he is driven onward, ever onward, however much his tired limbs ache, and however fervently he longs to lay down his weary head. When he is tormented by thirst, he begs at some hut for a drink; but he hands back the empty vessel without a word of thanks, for it was dirty, or there was an ugly insect in the water--in any case, he had found no refreshment in it. Refreshment! Where are the eyes which have taken from us the desire ever to look into other, brighter, more ardent eyes? Where the breast upon which we have rested with the certain knowledge that we should never long to listen to the beating of a warmer, more loving heart? Where? Can you tell me where?" "Love," so runs the reply, "is the fragrance of the blue flower, which, as you have said, fills the world; and in every being whom you love with your whole heart you have found the blue flower." "I fear that is not a solution of the riddle," says the hero sorrowfully, "for this very condition, that we should love with our whole hearts ... we can never fulfil. Which of us can love with his whole heart? We are all so weary, so worn out, that we have neither the strength nor the courage essential to true, serious love--that love which does not rest until it has taken possession of every thought of a man's mind, every feeling of his heart, every drop of blood in his veins." This interpretation is a beautiful one, and it is not incorrect, but it is not exhaustive. It is not only in love, but in every domain of life that the "blue flower" represents perfect, and hence to that extent ideal, but still purely personal happiness. The longing for this, from its nature unattainable, happiness is the constant, restless desire depicted by all the Romanticists.