cked
in a small room.

How fair is that fourth period of life, (which we begin with the fourth
glass.) Fourteen years old, my soul; but the boyish games are left
behind, and you are steeped to the lips in reading--especially Goethe
and Schiller, over whom you pore without understanding much. You think,
however, you understand it all, and you have already kissed Elvira
behind the cupboard door, and broken Emma's heart. Perjured villain!
she may be another Charlotte, and she may possibly even have read some
of Clauren, and be deeply in love with thee (and him). Let the scene
change. I blow a greeting to that dear Alpine valley [Blaubeuern] where
I spent so many years at school; the cloister roof, the walks over the
brasses of dead abbots, the church with the wonderful high altar, the
images dipped in the bright gold of sunrise. Thanks be to the strong
Alpine air that I was ever full fledged and can fly as well as most
people.

Another glass! Another period. That is a better glass than the last, I
think--there's an aroma about it that the other lacked. And what a
period that was! My college days! High, noble, savage, inharmonious,
rough, fair; all opposites and contrasts that ever existed, blended
then. No outsider can ever know the delights, and an outsider can
hardly choose but laugh at the follies. Mixed with all the dross we
bring up from thence there are generally some particles of fine gold.
The music of our life would be strange indeed to one who had not sung
and laughed with us. I know well what my granddad felt when he crossed
the name of some fellow-collegian in his Book of Memory. God bless them
all!

Another glass, by the immortal gods, and another bottle this time! From
Friendship to Love. The most wonderful thing of this period (period
six, please observe, my soul) was that its grades fitted themselves
into and took their colour from my reading. Especially my affections
got coloured from Wilhelm Meister; that is to say, I hardly knew
whether it was Emmeline or the gentle Camilla, or even Ottilie. Didn't
all three peep out from behind jalousies in bewitching nightcaps to
hear the mournful squeaks which my numbed fingers elicited from the
guitar? And when all three proved but heartless coquettes, I swore I
would never marry till I was forty. Yet the little god slides from the
eyes of the loved one into the heart of the victim. For am I not a
victim? Is not she the coldest listener of all when I sing? did sh