But my hour, too, seemed on the point of striking, for when I went home in my last Christmas vacation I thought myself really in love with the charming daughter of the pleasant widow of a landed proprietor.

Nay, though only nineteen, I even considered whether I should not unite her destiny with mine, and formally ask her hand.

My father had offered himself to my mother at the same age.
In Kottbus I was treated with the respect due to a man, but at home I was still "the boy," and the youngest of us three "little ones." Ludo, as a lieutenant, had a position in society, while I was yet a schoolboy.
Amid these surroundings I realized how hasty and premature my intention had been.
Only four of us came to keep Christmas at home, for Martha now lived in Dresden as the wife of Lieutenant Baron Curt von Brandenstein, the nephew of our Aunt Sophie's husband.

Her wedding ceremony in the cathedral was, of course, performed by the court-chaplain Strauss.
My grandmother had died, but my Aunt Sophie still lived in Dresden, and spent her summers in Blasewitz.

Her hospitable house always afforded an atmosphere very stimulating to intellectual life, so I spent more time there than in my mother's more quiet residence at Pillnitz.
I had usually passed part of the long--or, as it was called, the "dog-day"-- vacation in or near Dresden, but I also took pleasant pedestrian tours in Bohemia, and after my promotion to the senior class, through the Black Forest.
It was a delightful excursion! Yet I can never recall it without a tinge of sadness, for my two companions, a talented young artist named Rothermund, and a law student called Forster, both died young.