and solemn was the preacher's discourse, urging his hearers, by the power of a higher consciousness, to shake off all sin, successfully to resist all temptations, to despise all earthly charms.

"And the spiritual instruction was followed by spiritual exercises.

"I can here only relate what I felt and what a flash of lightning was launched into my soul on that evening. Mephistopheles might feel himself at home in the classical Walpurgis night, he had been educated to it on the Blocksberg; but a man who has only seen female beauty in a statuary of antiques is internally stirred by it at first as by something strange, divine; yet the sacred fire transforms itself into a brand that it casts into his soul.

"Thus it befell me also! Another perhaps would have turned away from the incredible, as if from some hypocritical doings, and have condemned the leader of this divina comedia. Again another would have condemned the excesses of extravagant piety which played a serious game with sin.

"The veil of Sais which hung before my life was torn; for the first time I saw in all its glory the disguised wonder of my dreams, woman.

"But the Millennium also sank into ruins with one blow!

"I was sufficiently used to intoxicated rapture not to condemn with the mind of the sober man that which was unusual, over which the uninitiated must break a lance. That which was done, was not done in the service of sin, it was a holy sacrifice, and how could the exalted lights of the community be thus extinguished in the fog and mist of what was common? If the limitless audacity of these believers made me shudder--it was only the curse of sin, the temptation of the devil, it was the unatonable crime of beauty, against which the power of blessed resistance might strive in vain.

"And this marvel of creation should be a work of the devil, this paradise of beauty only conceal the serpent within itself!

"Fools who drew to light the secret dispositions of the primeval powers, because ruin and sin creep about in darkness, but in light beauty triumphs. No uneasiness, no thought of mockery and desecration arose within me; I felt so strange amongst these men and women, for only in the service of higher powers could they overcome that which without in unsanctified circles was esteemed citizen-like custom. Their sanctification consisted in crossing themselves before beauty, and drawing near to it in blindness that could see, and with a loathing that struggled to suppress delight.

"Thus had the preacher taught; in such sanctity I, too, made my essay, but much too great was the power of beauty over me who had hitherto seen so little. I felt that its contemplation sanctified me otherwise than the secret doctrine desired. Like an electric flash of enlightenment, it poured over all recollections of my school days; the dreary lecture-room was transformed into Mount Ida with its goddesses, and Venus appeared before my eyes as she arises in immortal beauty out of the ocean's billows.

"A heretic was begotten in me, secession from the dark doctrine proclaimed itself in my heart. A principal figure of those revelations which illumine the creation of the world with mysterious light, stood before my soul, and I had the temerity to compare myself with it. It was that Eloah of light, that Lucifer who suddenly perceived that the powers of light which flowed from him became diminished, and now retained them defiantly within himself, in opposition to the plan of creation. Thus I felt within me the spirit of revolt, the individual power which receives the light of revelation in itself merely for its own defiant illumination.

"And on that evening the Gräfin from the Castle led Frau Salden to me as my spiritual bride. Spiritual bride!--profound significance lay in this word, a significance which extended far away beyond the span of earthly life; it contained a consecration for this and for that other world.

"Yet I was no longer capable of grasping that import--earthly love had laid hold of my heart; now I no longer recognised the barriers, as I did after that confession to the Gräfin; like a tempest in spring, I felt it rage within me: the spring of love and beauty had for the first time made their entry into my soul.

"I visited Frau Salden, but how changed everything appeared to me in those cosy rooms! All rest, all peace had vanished from them. The lines in the splendid open Bible ran confusedly into one another, the Magdalene on the wall seemed to rise from her couch, throw the Bible aside, and be wafted towards us in that seductive beauty in which she once wandered on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and, as if in mockery of my feverish unrest, the windmill sails on yonder side of the river moved with irritating regularity.

"But the seraphic kisses of my spiritual bride burned upon my lips.

"She was gentle and calm before my passionate fervour. I acknowledged to her that I loved her; she replied that such was my right and my duty, and that this love was reciprocated by her; certainly it might not be of a perishable form, not like children of the world must we love one another, but with imperishable spiritual love. My heart, all my feelings were bound up in her. Nevertheless, it was not merely indistinctness, but hypocrisy on my part when I still spoke of such spiritual love, for I loved her with all fervour, as mortals love who do not belong to the elect and chosen.

"I still frequently attempted to attune my mind to those emotions which filled me when woman still stood before me sublime, unknown; but that magic was broken, and as I previously, probably more than all others of that circle, had been capable of the purest spiritual love, so was I now, when since that fatal evening on which the unhemmed waves of passion broke over me, more incapable of it than all others.

"What to the others appeared to be the hermit's grotto of Saint Anthony, who resisted the allurements of the spirit of beauty, had become a mount of Venus for me, and like a modern Tannhäuser, I lay beneath the spell of the immortal goddess.

"I dared not confess my heresy to the beloved one; perhaps she would have turned angrily away from me for ever, and I could justify my silence, because I too had moments in which I could join in my spiritual bride's fervent prayers, but they were merely moments. My internal estrangement from the faith of the elect community increased. I only ventured to express the faintest doubts, then she looked at me with an expression of infinite love; her large tender eye rested upon me with such soul-felt meaning; verily her love for me was different from mine for her: she appeared to watch over my whole life, she felt that we must all be prepared to welcome the coming hour of the Millennium; atonement, forgiveness, purification spoke from out her looks, infinite desire to rescue, to sanctify the sinner.

"I came frequently, I came daily; she withheld all tokens which love demands, although her saintly eyes expressed an increasing, more intense emotion. I became a hypocrite, I required these tokens in the name of salvation, of spiritual exercises; could my spiritual bride deny me them?

"Serious and devout conversations must accompany the work of sanctification.

"She urged me with great sternness, and blamed my lack of holy strength, when my eyes told more of passion than of sacred self-conquest; yet her eyes, too, were not always so stern as her words; sometimes they were filled with a tenderness the eloquence of which was very different from that which flowed from her lips; it was as if they would atone for the unavoidably harsh word which sacred duty imposed; yes this word, too, lost its victorious decision, it quivered with internal conflict,