Indeed, Ottilia looked like a fairy herself: pale, small, slim, and
airy. You could not see her face, as it were, for her eyes, which were
so wild, and so tender, and shone so that they would have dazzled an
eagle, much more a poor goose of a Fitz-Boodle. In the theatre, when she
sat on the opposite side of the house, those big eyes used to pursue me
as I sat pretending to listen to the "Zauberflote," or to "Don Carlos,"
or "Egmont," and at the tender passages, especially, they would have
such a winning, weeping, imploring look with them as flesh and blood
could not bear.

Shall I tell how I became a poet for the dear girl's sake? 'Tis surely
unnecessary after the reader has perused the above versions of her
poems. Shall I tell what wild follies I committed in prose as well as
in verse? how I used to watch under her window of icy evenings, and with
chilblainy fingers sing serenades to her on the guitar? Shall I tell
how, in a sledging-party, I had the happiness to drive her, and of
the delightful privilege which is, on these occasions, accorded to the
driver?

Any reader who has spent a winter in Germany perhaps knows it. A large
party of a score or more of sledges is formed. Away they go to some
pleasure-house that has been previously fixed upon, where a ball and
collation are prepared, and where each man, as his partner descends, has
the delicious privilege of saluting her. O heavens and earth! I may grow
to be a thousand years old, but I can never forget the rapture of that
salute.

"The keen air has given me an appetite," said the dear angel, as we
entered the supper-room; and to say the truth, fairy as she was, she