‘What an age it is since I heard from you! I look out fervently every day for the postman, and he never comes. I suppose you are _busy_! How completely changed you are, you who never used to be busy. I am writing this at the midnight hour, because I have news for you. Good news, of course; if it were bad news, I should leave it to travel to you on its own legs. Old Biermann, the _Direktor_, and I have, so to speak, buried the tomahawk, and sworn an alliance; and he is going to give my little cantata, _Hermann u. Dorothea_, at the next concert but one. This is a great step in advance. I hardly know what has induced him to be so gracious; but his word is given now, and let him repent him never so much, he will be obliged to carry it out. I need not tell you, however, that I look upon it only as a step, and that my hopes and wishes continue to turn always to the opera. I am not hurrying about it, because I want it to be worth hearing when it is done. Mozart was only eighteen when his first opera (it’s true it was a comic one) was produced, and I am nearly twenty. ‘I am in luck’s way, too. I have earned ten pounds by my own exertions, teaching, in the last six months. It is spread out before me in a beautiful shining row. No money ever looked so charming before. Please remember this, and make your next remittance ten pounds less than usual, or else I shall not feel as if I had really earned it. ‘I cannot give you any news, for there is none; still, I will tell you what happened to me the other day. I was walking in the _Hofgarten_, when I met a lady walking alone. I looked up, and I thought: ‘Helena Spenceley! How did she come here?’ In the surprise of the moment I did not look at her attentively enough, but raised my cap, held out my hand, and was going to accost her, when she smiled and uttered a rather astonished ‘_Mein Herr_, you are mistaken!’ She was German, and when she smiled I saw the difference; she had not Helena’s fire and spirit, and yet the likeness was wonderful. The incident set me thinking about these old days. You never mention Helena now. Do you never see her? Tell me when you write. I have never seen any one like her. I suppose you are too busy to think of such things. I used to wonder at your coolness all the time that she was suffering so, in consequence of that wicked father and brother of hers. I used to make her, in my own mind, the heroine of a hundred tragedies and romances, in those days. And yet--forgive me for saying so, I have always said things I ought not to say, to you--I was nothing to her but an enthusiastic boy, to whom she was kind, and you were a great deal--a man--I believe _the_ man. Since I met that lady in the gardens, I have thought a great deal about it, and as I found a little poem the other day, called _Hélène_, I composed an air for it, and made it into a song; but I shall not sell it. You may have it