A book we liked well to read and translate was Schiller’s Ballads; Paulina soon learned to read them beautifully; the Fräulein would listen to her with a broad smile of pleasure, and say her voice sounded like music. She translated them, too, with a facile flow of language, and in a strain of kindred and poetic fervour: her cheek would flush, her lips tremblingly smile, her beauteous eyes kindle or melt as she went on. She learnt the best by heart, and would often recite them when we were alone together. One she liked well was Des Mädchens Klage : that is, she liked well to repeat the words, she found plaintive melody in the sound; the sense she would criticise. She murmured, as we sat over the fire one evening⁠—

Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,

Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,

Ich habe gelebt und geliebet!

Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück, Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück, Ich habe gelebt und geliebet!

“Lived and loved!” said she, “is that the summit of earthly happiness, the end of life⁠—to love? I don’t think it is. It may be the extreme of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of feeling. If Schiller had said to be loved, he might have come nearer the truth. Is not that another thing, Lucy, to be loved?”