"I knew Oldenburg from my childhood. My father's estate adjoined Cona, where you were yesterday. My aunt, who undertook my education after my mother's death, and Oldenburg's mother were warm friends, and met almost daily. So did we children. Oldenburg was several years older than I, but as girls are always ahead of boys in their development, we did not feel the difference in age much; we played and worked together; we were good comrades--ordinarily, for not unfrequently we fell out, and then we had sharp words and quarrels and tears. I rarely gave cause for them, for I was not obstinate, and always ready to give way, but Adalbert was excessively sensitive, stubborn, and self-willed. The double nature of his character, which he afterwards tried to harmonize and to conceal from all but the most sharp-sighted, was then very evident. It was impossible not to become interested in him, but I doubt if anybody really loved him. This he felt, and this feeling, which he bore about with him like a concealed wound, made him early a hypochondriac and a misanthrope. It was of little use to him that everybody admired his eminent talents, and that no one doubted his courage, his love of the truth--his stubborn, self-willed ways repelled all and offended all. Even his tall, ungraceful figure and his awkward motions contributed to turn the hearts of men away from him. At least it was so with me. I had from childhood up felt irresistibly attracted towards all that was beautiful and graceful, and had a real horror of what was ugly and ill-shapen. I could not love Adalbert, although he was sincerely attached to me with great tenderness, which he carefully hid under an appearance of coldness and rudeness. When his passionate temper got the better of his attempted calmness, he would even reproach me bitterly on account of my heartlessness and my fickleness. "Such were our relations till Adalbert, at sixteen, went to college, for he had persuaded his guardian--his mother had also died in the mean time--to let him go to the city. Now he came but rarely to Cona, and then only for a few days. Then I was for two years at boarding-school. Thus it came about that we met only in passing, till he went to the University at Heidelberg. When he returned from there, and from a long journey, I had been married two years.