[The Story Of My Life From Childhood To Manhood by Georg Ebers]@TWC D-Link bookThe Story Of My Life From Childhood To Manhood CHAPTER XXII 4/10
I felt that Pernice was right--it was the warm heart, not the cool head, which should deal with these matters, and I left the church, which I had entered merely to shorten an hour, feeling as if released from a burden. Our return home was pleasant, and I began to attend the law lectures at Gottingen with tolerable regularity. I was as full of life, and, when occasion offered, as reckless, as ever, though a strange symptom began to make itself unpleasantly felt.
It appeared only after severe exertion in walking, fencing, or dancing, and consisted of a peculiar, tender feeling in the soles of my feet, which I attributed to some fault of the shoemaker, and troubled myself the less about it because it vanished soon after I came in. But the family of Professor Baum, the famous surgeon, where I was very intimate, had thought ever since my return from the Christmas vacation that I did not look well. With Marianne, the second daughter of this hospitable household, a beautiful girl of remarkably brilliant mind, I had formed so intimate, almost fraternal, a friendship, that both she and her warm-hearted mother called me "Cousin Schorge." Frau Dirichlet, the wife of the great mathematician, the sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, in whose social and musical home I spent hours of pleasure which will never be forgotten, also expressed her anxiety about my loss of flesh.
When a girl she had often met my mother, and at my first visit she won my affection by her eager praise of that beloved woman's charms. As the whole family were extremely musical they could afford themselves and their friends a great deal of enjoyment.
I have never heard Joachim play so entrancingly as to her accompaniment.
At a performance in her own house, where the choruses from Cherubini's Water-Carrier were given, she herself had rehearsed the music with those who were to take part, and to hear her play on the piano was a treat. This lady, a remarkable woman in every respect, who gave me many tokens of maternal affection, insisted on the right to warn me.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|