in part a simulated madness with souls of this type.  In early youth he would sneer at the amours of his comrades.  It is true he fell a victim to the charms of Theresa Grobe, a beautiful soprano, who afterward became the spouse of a master-baker.  But the only genuine love-sickness of Schubert was of a far different type, and left indelible traces on his nature, as its very direction made it of necessity unfortunate.  This was his attachment to Countess Caroline Esterhazy.

The Count Esterhazy, one of those great feudal princes still extant among the Austrian nobility, took a traditional pride in encouraging genius, and found in Franz Schubert a noble object for the exercise of his generous patronage.  He was almost a boy (only nineteen), except in the prodigious development of his genius, when he entered the Esterhazy family as teacher of music, though always treated as a dear and familiar friend.  During the summer months, Schubert went with the Esterhazy s to their country-seat at Zelesz, in Hungary.  Here, amid beautiful scenery, and the sweetness of a social life perfect of its kind, our poet’s life flew on rapid wings, the one bright, green spot of unalloyed happiness, for the dream was delicious while it lasted.  Here, too, his musical life gathered a fresh inspiration, since he became acquainted with the treasures of the national Hungarian music, with its weird, wild rhythms and striking melodies.  He borrowed the motives of many of his most characteristic songs from these reminiscences of hut and hall, for the Esterhazys were royal in their hospitality, and exercised a wide patriarchal sway.

The beautiful Countess Caroline, an enthusiastic girl of great beauty, became the object of a romantic passion.  A young, inexperienced maiden, full of naive sweetness, the finest flower of the haughty Austrian caste, she stood at an infinite distance from Schubert, while she treated him with childlike confidence and fondness, laughing at his eccentricities, and worshiping his genius, lie bowed before this idol, and poured out all the incense of his heart.  Schubert’s exterior was anything but that of the ideal lover.  Rude, unshapely features, thick nose, coarse, protruding mouth, and a shambling, awkward figure, were redeemed only by eyes of uncommon splendor and depth, aflame with the unmistakable light of the soul.

The inexperienced maiden hardly understood the devotion of the artist, which found expression in a thousand ways peculiar to himself.  Only once he was on the verge of a full revelation.  She asked him why he had dedicated nothing to her.  With abrupt, passionate intensity of tone Schubert answered, “What’s the use of that?  Everything belongs to you!” This brink of confession seems to have frightened him, for it is said that after this he threw much more reserve about his intercourse with the family, till it was broken off.  Hints in his letters, and the deep despondency which increased after this, indicate, however, that the humbly-born genius never forgot his beautiful dream.