“My head is quite giddy from the events of the day; it is already late at night and I have nothing else to say; but I must write to you, I feel so rich and happy.”

It is a proof of the fondness the people cherished for Mendelssohn that, when the engagement became noised abroad, the directors of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig put on the programme the second finale in “Fidelio,” “He who has gained a charming wife” ("Wer ein holdes Weib errungen").  The audience saw the meaning at once and shouted in its enthusiasm, until Mendelssohn was forced to seat himself at the piano and extemporise upon the theme.

Felix and Cecile were married March 28, 1837, at the Walloon French Reformed Church in Frankfort, and his friend Hiller surprised them with a new bridal chorus.  The wedding tour lasted nearly a month, and the honeymooners kept a journal, in which they both sketched and wrote humourous nothings.  The home they chose was in Leipzig, where Fanny Hensel visited them, and found Cecile possessed not only of “the beautiful eyes” Felix had raved over so much, “but possessed also of a wonderfully soothing temperament, that calmed her husband’s whims and promised to cure him of his irritability.”

The married life of the two was interrupted by the journeys the husband had to make for his important engagements, till he growled vigorously, and regretted being a conductor at all.

In February, 1838, the first child was born, and Cecile was dangerously ill.  On other tours of his, even to England, she accompanied him.  She bore him five children, three boys and two girls.  Their life together was almost perfect.  He writes, in 1841, to a friend who is to be married: 

“If I have still a wish to form it is that your blissful betrothal-mood may be continued in marriage, that is, may you be like me, who feel every day of my life that I cannot be sufficiently thankful to God for my happiness.”

In another letter he thus pictures his private paradise:  “Eating and sleeping, without dress coat, without piano, without visiting-cards, without carriage and horses, but with donkeys, with wild flowers, with music-paper and sketch-book, with Cecile and the children.”  Again, in 1844, he writes of a return home: 

“I found all my family well, and we had a joyful meeting.  Cecile looks so well again,—­tanned by the sun, but without the least trace of her former indisposition; my first glance told this when I came into the room, but to this day I cannot cease rejoicing afresh every time I look at her.  The children are as brown as Moors, and play all day long in the garden.  And so I am myself again now, and I take one of the sheets of paper that Cecile painted for me, to write to you.