The most insistent note to be observed in his correspondence from this time on is that of a desire to remain within his own four walls.  Fanny had been advised to go to the seashore for her health, but had delayed doing so because loath to leave her husband.  “Think of me,” writes Felix, urging her to go, “who must in a few weeks, though we have not been married four months yet, leave Cecile here and go to England by myself—­all, too, for the sake of a music festival.  Gracious me!  All this is no joke.  But possibly the death of the King of England will intervene and put a stop to the whole project.”  The life of a king meant little to Felix in the distressing prospect of being obliged to leave his Cecile.  Felix, the husband, was not as eager to travel as Felix, the bachelor, had been.

There are various “appreciations” of Cecile.  The least enthusiastic, perhaps, is that of Hensel, Felix’s brother-in-law.  He says that she was not a striking person in anyway, neither extraordinarily clever, brilliantly witty, nor exceptionally accomplished.  But to this somewhat indefinite observation he adds that she exerted an influence as soothing as that of the open sky, or running water.  Indeed, Hensel’s first frigid reserve yielded to the opinion that Cecile’s gentleness and brightness made Felix’s life one continued course of happiness to the end.  It was some time after the marriage before Mendelssohn’s sisters saw Cecile for the first time.  The good they heard of her made them the more impatient to meet her.  “I tell you candidly,” the clever Fanny writes to her, “that by this time, when anybody comes to talk to me about your beauty and your eyes, it makes me quite cross.  I have had enough of hearsay, and beautiful eyes were not made to be heard.”  When at last Fanny did see Cecile, this fond sister of Felix’s, who naturally would be most critical, was enthusiastic over her.  “She is amiable, simple, fresh, happy and even-tempered, and I consider Felix most fortunate.  For though loving him inexpressibly, she does not spoil him, but when he is moody, meets him with a self-restraint which in due course of time will cure him of his moodiness altogether.  The effect of her presence is like that of a fresh breeze, she is so light and bright and natural.”

To my mind, however, Devrient has drawn the best word portrait of her.  After their first meeting he wrote:  “How often we had pictured the kind of woman that would be a true second half to Felix; and now the lovely, gentle being was before us, whose glance and smile alone promised all that we could desire for the happiness of our spoilt favorite.”  Later, Devrient finished the picture:  “Cecile was one of those sweet, womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased.  She was slender, with strikingly beautiful and delicate features; her hair was between brown and gold; but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses on her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death.  She spoke little and never with animation, and in a low, soft voice.  Shakespeare’s words, ’my gracious silence,’ applied to her, no less than to Cordelia.”