In the mean time I have the satisfaction to draw all those, who expect in Schwarzenbach a repetition of the Joditz love, from their error, and inform them that it came to something. On a winter evening, when my princess’s collection of sweet gifts was prepared, and needed only a receiver, the pastor’s son, who among all my school companions was the worst, persuaded me, when a visit from the chaplain occupied my father, to leave the parsonage while it was dark, to pass the bridge, and venture, which I had never done, into the house where the beloved dwelt with her poor grandmother up in a little corner chamber. We entered a little ale-house underneath. Whether Catharine happened to be there, or whether the rascal, under the pretence of a message, allured her down upon the middle of the steps, or, in short, how it happened that I found her there, has become only a dreamy recollection; for the sudden lightning of the present darkened all that went behind. As violently as if I had been a robber, I first pressed upon her my present of sweetmeats, and then I, who in Joditz never could reach the heaven of a first kiss, and never even dared to touch the beloved hand, I, for the first time, held a beloved being upon my heart and lips. I have nothing further to say, but that it was the _one_ pearl of a minute, that was never repeated; a whole longing past and a dreaming future were united in one moment, and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the fireworks of a whole life were evolved in a glance. Ah, I have never forgotten it,—the ineffaceable moment! I returned like a _clairvoyant_ from heaven again to earth, and remarked only that in this second Christmas festival Ruprecht[9] did not precede, but followed it, for on my way home I met a messenger coming for me, and was severely scolded for running away. Usually after such warm silver beams of a blessed sun there falls a closing, stormy gust. What was its effect on me? The stream of words could not drain my paradise,—for does it not bloom even to-day around and forth from my pen?