rightly thought and expressed. Music will perhaps become his profession, whilst for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the root of your being and doing. We may therefore pardon him some ambition and desire to be acknowledged in a pursuit which appears very important to him, because he feels a vocation for it, whilst it does you credit that you have always shown yourself good and sensible in these matters; and your very joy at the praise he earns proves that you might, in his place, have merited equal applause. Remain true to these sentiments and to this line of conduct; they are feminine, and only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex."
Between Felix and Fanny there was, from the first, a beautifully intimate relation. They worked together daily, each fully appreciating and admiring the labors of the other. Felix concealed nothing from his sister, and, as she afterwards declared, she was acquainted with his compositions from their birth.
"Up to the present moment," she wrote after many years, "I possess his unbounded confidence, I have watched the progress of his talent, step by step, and may even say, I have contributed to his development. I have always been his only musical adviser, and he never writes down a thought before submitting it to my judgment. For instance, I have known his operas by heart before a note was written."
When she was seventeen, a plump, pleasing girl, with a face spirited and refined rather than beautiful, and a pair of magnificent dark eyes, Fanny won the heart of Wilhelm Hensel, a young artist of great promise, whose affection she reciprocated. The young man, however, had as yet attained no recognized position; he was poor, and had relatives dependent upon him for support. Marriage was as yet impossible, and Fanny's discreet
