These visits brought life and change into our quiet existence, and when four weeks later my brother Ludo joined us he was delighted with the improvement in my appearance, and I myself felt the benefit which my paralyzed muscles had received from the baths and the seclusion.

The second season at Wildbad, thanks to the increased intimacy with the friends whose acquaintance we had made there, was even more enjoyable than the first.

Frau Hallberger was a very beautiful young woman.  Her husband, who was to become my dearest friend, was detained in Stuttgart by business.  She was unfortunately obliged to use the waters of the springs medicinally, and many an hour was clouded by mental and physical discomfort.

Yet the vivacity of her intellect, her rare familiarity with all the newest literature, and her unusually keen appreciation of everything which was beautiful in nature stimulated and charmed us.  I have never seen any one seek flowers in the field and forest so eagerly, and she made them into beautiful bouquets, which Louis Gallait called “bewitching flower madrigals.”

Moritz Hartmann had not fully recovered from the severe illness which nearly caused his death while he was a reporter in the Crimean War.  His father-in-law, Herr Rodiger, accompanied him and watched him with the most touching solicitude.  My mother soon became sincerely attached to the author, who possessed every quality to win a woman’s heart.  He had been considered the handsomest member of the Frankfort Parliament, and no one could have helped gazing with pleasure at the faultless symmetry of his features.  He also possessed an unusually musical voice.  Gallait said that he first thought German a language pleasing to the ear when he heard it from Hartmann’s lips.

These qualities soon won the heart of Frau Puricelli, who had at first been very averse to making his acquaintance.  The devout, conservative lady had heard enough of his religious and political views to consider him detestable.  But after Hartmann had talked and read aloud to her and her daughter in his charming way, she said to me, “What vexes me is that in my old age I can’t help liking such a red Democrat.”

During that summer was formed the bond of friendship which, to his life’s premature end, united me to Moritz Hartmann, and led to a correspondence which afforded me the greater pleasure the more certain I became that he understood me.  We met again in Wildbad the second and third summers, and with what pleasure I remember our conversations in the stillness of the shady woods!  But we also shared a noisy amusement, that of pistol practice, to which we daily devoted an hour.  I was obliged to fire from a wheel-chair, yet, like Hartmann, I could boast of many a good shot; but the skill of Herr Rodiger, the author’s father-in-law, was really wonderful.  Though his hand trembled constantly from an attack of palsy, I don’t know now how many times he pierced the centre of the ace of hearts.