It is worth while to recall Hoffmann’s story, as an example of the sort of literature to which Schumann responded musically. In Dr. Bie’s words:[93] ‘The garden into which the author leads us is full of tone and song. The stranger comes up to the young squire and tells him of many distant and unknown lands, and strange men and animals; and his speech dies away into a wonderful tone, in which he expresses unknown and mysterious things, intelligibly, yet without words. But the castle maiden follows his enticements, and they meet every midnight at the old tree, none venturing to approach too near the strange melodies that sound therefrom. Then the castle maiden lies pierced through under the tree, and the lute is broken, but from her blood grow mosses of wonderful color over the stone, and the young Chrysostom hears the nightingale, which thereafter makes its nest and sings its song in the tree. At home his father is accompanying his old songs on the clavicymbal, and songs, mosses, and castle maiden are all fused in his mind into one. In the garden of tone and song all sorts of internal melodies rise in his heart, and the murmur of the words gives them their breath. He tries to set them to the clavier, but they refuse to come forth from their hiding places. He closes the instrument, and listens to see whether the songs will not now sound forth more clearly and brightly; for “I knew well that the tones must dwell there as if enchanted.” Out of a world like this floated all sorts of compositions in Schumann’s mind.... A thousand threads run from all sides into this intimate web in which the whole lyrical devotion of a musical soul is interwoven. The piano is the orchestra of the heart. The joys and sorrows which are expressed in these pieces were never put into form with more sovereign power. For the external form Bach gave the impulse; for the content, Hoffmann. The garlanded roses of the middle section of No. 1, the shimmering blossoms of the ‘inverted’ passage in the _Langsamer_ of No. 2, the immeasurable depth of the emotions in the slow pieces (4 and 6), the bass unfettered by accent, in the last bars of No. 8, leading down to final whisperings, all are among the happiest of inspirations.’