"'And thus it was with Heinrich of Ofterdingen. His love was as warm and longing as ever, but he looked no more into the black, hopeless abyss. He lifted his eyes to the shimmering clouds of spring, and then it seemed to him as if his beloved was looking down at him with her beautiful eyes, inspiring him with the most glorious songs he had ever sung. He took his lute down from the wall, strung it with fresh strings, and went forth into the fair spring weather which had just commenced. Then he felt powerfully impelled towards the region of the Wartburg; and when he saw the towers of the castle shining in the distance, and reflected that he would never see Mathilda more--that his life would never be anything but a hopeless longing; that Wolfframb had won the peerless lady by the power of song--all his lovely visions of hope sank away into gloomy night, and the deathly pangs of despair and jealousy pierced his heart. Then he fled, as if pursued by evil spirits, back to his lonely chamber, and there he was able to sing songs which brought him delicious dreams, and, in them, the Beloved herself. "'For a long time he had succeeded in avoiding the sight of the towers of the Wartburg; but one day he got into the forest--he scarce could tell how--the forest which lies in front of the Wartburg, on going out of which one has the castle close before his sight. He had come to a part of the woods where strangely-shaped crags rise up, covered with many-tinted mosses, surrounded by thick copses and ugly, stunted, prickly underwood. With some difficulty he clambered halfway up these rocks, so that, through a cleft, he could see the towers of the Wartburg rising in the distance. There he sat himself down, and, vanquishing the pain of his gloomy fancies, lost himself in dreams of the sweetest hope.