As I passed by the old castle and the lindens, and saw the sentinels upon their horses, how many memories awakened in my soul, and how everything had changed!  Many years had flown since I was at the castle.  The Princess was dead.  The Prince had given up his rule and gone back to Italy, and the oldest prince, with whom I had grown up, was regent.  His companions were young noblemen and officers, whose intercourse was congenial to him, and whose company in our early days had often estranged us.  Other circumstances combined to weaken our young friendship.  Like every young man who perceives for the first time the lack of unity in the German folk-life, and the defects of German rule, I had caught up some phrases of the Liberal party, which sounded as strangely at court as unseemly expressions in an honest minister’s family.  In short, it was many years since I had ascended those stairs, and yet a being dwelt in that castle whose name I had named almost daily, and who was almost constantly present in my memory.  I had long dwelt upon the thought that I should never see her again in this life.  She was transformed into an image which I felt neither did nor could exist in reality.  She had become my good angel—­my other self, to whom I talked instead of talking with myself.  How she became so I could not explain to myself, for I scarcely knew her.  Just as the eye sometimes pictures figures in the clouds, so I fancied my imagination had conjured up this sweet image in the heaven of my childhood, and a complete picture of phantasy developed itself out of the scarcely perceptible outlines of reality.  My entire thought had involuntarily become a dialogue with her, and all that was good in me, all for which I struggled, all in which I believed, my entire better self, belonged to her.  I gave it to her.  I received it from her, from her my good angel.

I had been at home but a few days, when I received a letter one morning.  It was written in English, and came from the Countess Marie: 

Dear Friend:  I hear you are with us for a short time.  We have not met for many years, and if it is agreeable to you, I should like to see an old friend again.  You will find me alone this afternoon in the Swiss Cottage.  Yours sincerely, Marie.

I immediately replied, also in English, that I would call in the afternoon.

The Swiss Cottage constituted a wing of the castle, which overlooked the garden, and could be reached without going through the castle yard.  It was five o’clock when I passed through the garden and approached the cottage.  I repressed all emotion and prepared myself for a formal meeting.  I sought to quiet my good angel, and to assure her that this lady had nothing to do with her.  And yet I felt very uneasy, and my good angel would not listen to counsel.  Finally I took courage, murmuring something to myself about the masquerade of life, and rapped on the door, which stood ajar.