test our love." They wrote each other long
and daily letters; his were all of yearning, while hers were mingled
with fear, lest he be, as she wrote him, "a sweet poison harmful to the
soul."

After taking the baths, he went on to Berlin, arriving there August 3d
in the very ferment of rapture over the downfall of Napoleon at Prague.
He was moved to write a number of patriotic songs from Koerner's "Leier
und Schwert." These choruses for men were sung throughout the
Fatherland, as they still are sung.

But from the height of glory to which he was now borne, as the living
voice of the nation, he was dragged back to the depths by the little
hand and the little finger-nails of Caroline, who could be jealous
enough to suspect that not all the adoration Von Weber was receiving
from the women of Berlin was pure and impersonal patriotism.

Von Weber had from the first insisted that no marriage of theirs could
have hope of success, unless she left the stage. This sacrifice of
herself and her career and her large following among the public was a
deal to ask, and a deal to grant. Her combined reluctance to sacrifice
her all, and her jealous fears that he would not find her all in all, at
last led her to write him that they would better give up their dream,
and break their troth.

In his first bitterness at this inopportune humiliation, coming like a
drop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously to
Gansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above the
usual pitiful standard--namely, that art is but a means of procuring
soup, meat, and shirts." To another friend, Lichtenstein, he wrote more
solemnly:

"All my fondest hopes are vanishing day by day. I live like a drunken
man who dances on a thin coating of ice, and spite of his better reason
would persuade himself that he is on solid ground. I love with all my
heart and soul; and if there be no truth in her affection, the last
chord of my whole life has been struck. I shall still live on,--marry
perhaps some day,--who knows? But love and trust again, never more."

In September he returned to Prague with an anxious heart, and took up in
person a new battle for Caroline's hand. They were agreed upon the
subject of affection, but wrangled upon the clauses in the treaty of
marriage. While this debate was waging, Weber took care of her money and
her mother's. A benefit being given her, he announced that he himself
would sell the tickets at the box-o