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Somewhere in my sixth or seventh year I began to feel that, of all unseen forces, music was to seize me most strongly and to master me most completely. After this I had my own world, my refuge and my heaven, which no one could take from me, and which I desired to share with no one. I was a musician, although before my twelfth year I had learned to play no instrument, and never thought to earn my bread, later, through music.

No embarrassment came between Gertrude and me. We were carried on the same stream; we worked at the same work. It was for her, as it was for me, an unfolding, a ripening of our youth, a joy and a magic in which my passion burned unseen. She did not distinguish between my work and me. She loved us both and was ours. And for me, also, love and music and life seemed no longer distinct. Many times I looked on the beautiful girl in astonishment and wonder, and she returned my glance. When I came or went she pressed my hand more warmly than I dared to clasp hers. And in those balmy, summer days, when I went through the garden and entered the old house, I knew not whether it was my work or my love that so held me and uplifted me.

“You are entirely the type of the artist. An artist is not, as the Philistines think, a jolly fellow, who out of pure wild spirits flings down here and there a work of art. But instead he is a poor wretch, who suffers much, who is dying from too great an abundance, and, in order to live, must give of himself. The talk about happy artists amounts to nothing. That is pure Philistine babble!
That jolly Mozart kept himself up by means of champagne and suffered from lack of bread. And why Beethoven did not take his life in his youth, but instead wrote those master compositions, no man knows. A real artist must be unhappy in life. When he is hungry, and opens his sack, he finds nothing there but pearls.��

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