quaintance we had made there, was even more enjoyable
than the first.

Frau Hallberger was a very beautiful young woman. Her husband, who was to
become my dearest friend, was detained in Stuttgart by business. She was
unfortunately obliged to use the waters of the springs medicinally, and
many an hour was clouded by mental and physical discomfort.

Yet the vivacity of her intellect, her rare familiarity with all the
newest literature, and her unusually keen appreciation of everything
which was beautiful in nature stimulated and charmed us. I have never
seen any one seek flowers in the field and forest so eagerly, and she
made them into beautiful bouquets, which Louis Gallait called "bewitching
flower madrigals."

Moritz Hartmann had not fully recovered from the severe illness which
nearly caused his death while he was a reporter in the Crimean War. His
father-in-law, Herr Rodiger, accompanied him and watched him with the
most touching solicitude. My mother soon became sincerely attached to the
author, who possessed every quality to win a woman's heart. He had been
considered the handsomest member of the Frankfort Parliament, and no one
could have helped gazing with pleasure at the faultless symmetry of his
features. He also possessed an unusually musical voice. Gallait said that
he first thought German a language pleasing to the ear when he heard it
from Hartmann's lips.

These qualities soon won the heart of Frau Puricelli, who had at first
been very averse to making his acquaintance. The devout, conservative
lady had heard enough of his religious and political views to consider
him detestable. But after Hartmann had talked and read aloud to her and
her daughter in his charming way, she said to me, "What vexes me is that
in my old age I can't help liking such a red Democrat."

During that summer was formed the bond of friendship which, to his life's
premature end, united me to Moritz Hartmann, and led to a correspondence
which afforded me the greater pleasure the more certain I became that he
understood me. We met again in Wildbad the second and third summers, and
with what pleasure I remember our conversations in the stillness of the
shady woods! But we also shared a noisy amusement, that of pistol
practice, to which we daily devoted an hour. I was obliged to fire from a
wheel-chair, yet, like Hartmann, I could boast of many a good shot; but
the skill of Herr Rodiger, the author's father-in-law, was really
wonder