Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/52

 Why do you wear mournful black in dress and heart, my angel? Cultivate the green of hope that today made right joyous revelry in me at sight of its external image, when the gardener placed the first messengers of spring, hyacinths and crocus, on my window-ledge. ''Et dis-moi done, pourquoi es-tu paresseuse? Pourquoi ne fais-tu pas de musique?I fancied you playing c-dur when the hollow, melting wind howls through the dry twigs of the lindens, and d-moll'' when the snow-flakes chase in fantastic whirls around the corners of the old tower, and, after their desperation is spent, cover the graves with their winding-sheet. Oh, were I but Keudell, I'd play now all day long, and the tones would bear me over the Oder, Rega, Persante, Wipper—I know not whither. A propos de paresse, I am going to permit myself to make one more request of you, but with a preface. When I ask you for anything I add (do not take it for blasphemy or mockery) thy will be done—your will, I mean; and I do not love you less, nor am I vexed with you for a second if you do not fulfil my request. I love you as you are, and as you choose to be. After I have, by way of preface, said so much with inmost, unadorned truth, without hypocrisy or flattery, I beg you to pay some attention to French—not much, but somewhat—by reading French things that interest you, and, what is not clear to you, make it clear with the dictionary. If it bores you, stop it; but, lest it bore you, try it with books that interest you, whatever they may be—romances or anything else. I do not know your mother's views on such reading, but in my opinion there is nothing that you cannot read to yourself. I do not ask this for my own sake, for we will understand each other in our mother tongue, but in your intercourse with the world you will not seldom find occasions when it will be disagreeable or even mortifying if you are unfamiliar with French. I do not know, indeed, to what degree this is true of you, but reading is in any case a way to keep what you have and to acquire more. If it pleases you, we shall find a way for you to become more fluent in talking,