Here I could not shake off the delightful memories of these evenings because I did not strive to battle with them.
I am not without talent for drawing, and even at that time it was an easy matter to reproduce anything which had caught my eye, not only distinctly, but sometimes attractively and with a certain degree of fidelity to nature.

So my note-book was filled with figures which amazed me when I saw them afterwards, for my excited imagination had filled page after page with a perfect Witch's Sabbath of compositions, in which the oddest scrolls and throngs of genii blended with flowers, buds, and all sorts of emblems of love twined around initial letters or the picture of the person who had captured my heart at a time so inopportune.
I owe the suggestion of some verses which were written at that time to the memory of a dream.

I was on the back of a swan, which bore me through the air, and on another swan flying at my side sat Clara.

Our hands were clasped.

It was delightful until I bent to kiss her; then the swan I rode melted into mist, and I plunged headlong down, falling, falling, until I woke.
I had this dream on the Friday before the beginning of the week in which the first examination was to take place; and it is worthy of mention, for it was fulfilled.
True, I needed no prophetic vision to inform me that this time of happiness was drawing to a close.