Equally copious expansion is evident in the correspondence with Günderode,[2] a really remarkable volume of philosophy, poetry, and romantic “sensibility” made human, however, by the small ordinary preoccupations of the two very busy young women. Nine-tenths of the volume is occupied by Bettina’s own letters, supposedly written during a number of brief absences when she was a guest at various country estates. Had these voluminous outpourings actually been penned under such circumstances the girl would have had no time for meals or sleep, let alone the normal social exigencies of house-party life. Karoline von Günderode was one of several daughters of a moderately affluent widow, who spent the latter part of her short life in a “Kloster” (not a religious house but a dignified retreat for well-born spinsters such as has been charmingly pictured by “Isak Dinesen” in _Seven Gothic Tales_). She was, by all accounts, an interesting mixture of emotional mysticism and sceptical “masculine” intellect, and both are reflected in her poems.[3] At least one of these, “Wandel und Treue,” suggests that there is no certainty save that all is uncertain, no ultimate Truth because life and universe alike are in constant flux and inexpressible in terms of any constant pattern. It might almost have been written today rather than a century and a half ago. The context in which the poem is quoted shows that it grew out of long-sustained discussions between her and Bettina on the nature of love. It is cast in the form of a dialogue between Violetta, who embodies Bettina’s championship of romantic constancy, and Narziss, who represents Günderode’s own viewpoint. The latter holds that love, like all else, is subject to change; therefore, one should not attempt to fix it upon a single person or thing, but should love only Love and follow its dictates wherever it leads. The amount of stress laid upon this composition by Bettina, who compiled and inflated the correspondence for publication, suggests an effort to throw upon the other woman all responsibility for any inconstancy which ensued. The sixty-page biography of Günderode in Ersch and Gruber’s _Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste_[4] records several variant attachments in her life. Previous to her acquaintance with Bettina she enjoyed a very close friendship with Frau Karoline von Barkhaus, to whom she wrote oftener than weekly in the warmest terms, and in one of the quoted letters she mentions that ‘a room is ready where we will sleep together when you come.’ Another woman, Frau Susanna Maria von Heyden, mentioned as her most intimate friend, fell heir to Günderode’s portrait and two paintings of the scene of the unhappy girl’s death. She ‘never recovered from her grief over her unlucky friend, and lived secluded from the world in joyless solitude.’