Kaspar and I had a friend in common, the son of a member of the Cantonal parliament and respected merchant, whom we dearly loved on account of his submissiveness and his willingness to take part in any plan we hatched. We often went to visit him in his parental, parliamentary home where we were always given a friendly welcome by an exquisite lady, his mother. We would play for hours with our friend’s building blocks and tin soldiers and amuse ourselves splendidly. Kaspar excelled at building fortresses and palaces and sketching out battle plans. Our friend was very attached to us; to Kaspar, I thought, even more than me; and he often visited us at home as well, though things at our house were admittedly less refined. Hedwig was very fond of him. His mother was completely different from ours, the rooms gleamed more than at our house, and the tone was different; I mean, the tone of the conversations; but at our house, all in all, things were more lively. At the time, there was a wealthy lady in our town living all alone in a magnificent garden, in a house of course, but the house was invisible thanks to all the ivy and trees and fountains that concealed it. This lady had three daughters, beautiful, pale girls who were said to have a new dress to put on every two weeks. They didn’t keep these dresses in their cupboards, but rather sent special messengers to sell them to the townsfolk. At one point Hedwig owned a silk dress and pair of shoes that had belonged to one of these girls, and these second-hand items inspired in me, when I looked at and touched them, a secret repulsion combined with the greatest interest and a concern that often made me the butt of jokes. The lady was always sitting at home; at most she might put in an appearance at the theater, where she looked alarmingly white in her dark red box. The middle girl was probably the most beautiful of the three. I always imagined her seated on horseback; she had a face that looked as if made to gaze down from the back of a prancing horse upon a gaping crowd of people, causing them all to cast down their eyes. All three girls have no doubt long since married. — Once we had a conflagration, not in the town itself, but in a neighboring village. The entire sky all around was reddened by the flames, it was an icy winter night. People ran upon the frozen, crunching snow, including Kaspar and me; for our mother had sent us to find out where the fire was. We reached the flames, but it bored us to spend so long gazing into the burning beams, besides which we were freezing, and so we soon ran back home again, where Mother received us with all the severity of one who’s been made to worry. My mother was already unwell in those days. Not long afterward, Kaspar left school, where he was no longer prospering. I still had one more year ahead of me, but a certain melancholy took hold of me and bid me look with bitterness upon all things scholastic. I saw the end approaching and the imminent start of something new. What it would be — on this subject I could muster only the most foolish thoughts. I saw my brother often, laden down with packages, in his life of employment, and thought about why he looked so downcast as he worked, with his face drooping toward the ground: It couldn’t be so nice after all, this new thing, if you weren’t allowed to raise your eyes. But Kaspar had already begun to plan his career, he always seemed to be dreaming, and had such a curious calmness about him, which didn’t please our father at all. We were now living on the edge of town in humble lodgings the sight of which was enough to chill you through. This dwelling did not suit Mother. In general she had a most peculiar illness: She always felt wounded by her surroundings. She liked to go on about elegant little houses set in gardens. What do I know. She was a very unhappy woman. When for example we were all sitting at the dinner table, keeping fairly silent as was our custom, she would suddenly seize a fork or knife and hurl it away from her, right off the table, making all of us turn our heads to one side; if you tried to calm her, she would feel insulted, and if you reproached her, she would feel even more insulted. Father had his hands full with her. We children recalled with melancholy and pain the days when she’d been a woman who was received everywhere with an admixture of affection and esteem, when if she called you to her with her ringing voice, you happily rushed to her side. All the ladies in town paid her compliments which she brushed aside with grace and modesty; this bygone time appeared to me even then like a magical fairy tale filled with wonderful fragrances and images. And so I learned quite early to devote myself passionately to beautiful memories. Once more I saw the tall building where my parents ran a delightful costume jewelry shop, where people were always coming in to buy things, where we children had a bright, large nursery which the sun seemed particularly to enjoy filling up with light. Right beside our tall building crouched a short, crooked, squashed, ancient one beneath a pointed gable roof; a widow lived there. She had a hat shop, a son and a female relative, along with a dog, I believe, if memory serves. When you walked into her shop, she would greet you in such a friendly way that merely to stand in front of this woman would be a goodly pleasure. She would then press various hats upon your head and lead you to the mirror with a smile. Her hats all smelled so wonderful that you couldn’t help standing there transfixed. She was a good friend of my mother. Right next door, that is, right next door to the hat shop, a snow-white pastry shop glittered temptingly, a confectionery. The confectioner’s wife appeared to us to be an angel, not a woman. She had the most delicate oval face you could imagine; kindness and purity appeared to have given this face its shape. A smile that turned anyone it touched into an enchanted pious child sweetened her already sweet features. The entire woman appeared to have been made to sell sweets, delicacies and dainties that could only be touched by the very tips of one’s fingers, to preserve their exquisite flavors. She too was a friend of my mother. Mother had many friends—