m left, for a whole day, a mournful
echo in my heart." "My mood is often very sad, and I have not power
over it." "Thou art my bit of a sun that warms me, while everywhere
else frost falls on me." "Thy letter, dear Bettine, I have sipped as
wine from the goblet of Lyus." "I am studying the distinguished
Spartan women. If I cannot be heroic, and am always ill from
hesitation and timidity, I will at least fill my soul with that
heroism, and feed it with that vital power, in which I am so sadly
deficient." "Thou seemest to me the clay which a god is moulding with
his feet; and what I perceive in thee is the fermenting fire, that,
by his transcendent contact, he is strongly kneading into thee."
"When I read what I have written some time ago, I think I see myself
lying in my coffin, staring at my other self in astonishment."

"Clemens's letters make me think and consider, while over thine I
only feel; and they are grateful as a breath of air from the Holy
Land." "If two are to understand each other, it requires the
inspiring influence of a third divine one. And so I accept our mutual
existence as a gift of the gods, in which they themselves play the
happiest part."

And thus, on the other side, Bettine at various times writes to
Guenderode: "I wrote down, To-day I saw Guenderode: it was a gift of
God. To-day, as I read it again, I would gladly do every thing for
the love of thee. How much do I think of thee and of thy words, of
the black lashes that shaded thy blue eyes as I saw thee for the
first time; of thy kindly mien, and thy hand that stroked my hair!"
"Thy letter today has drawn a charmed ring around me." "On the castle
of the hill, in the night-dew, it was fair to be with thee. Those
were the dearest hours of all my life; and, when I return, we will
again dwell together there. We will have our beds close together, and
talk all night." "Thou and I think in harmony: we have as yet found
no third who can think with us, or to whom we have confided what we
think." "Thou art the sweet cadence by which my soul is rocked."
"What will become of me, if ever I pass out of the light which beams
on me from thine eyes? for thou seemest to me an ever-living look,
and as if on that my life hung." "I feel a deep longing to be with
thee again; for, beautiful as it is here on the Rhine, it is sad to
be without an echo in a living breast. Man is nothing but the desire
to feel himself in another." "When I dare look up to thee from my