[E]ven in gay, easygoing, and carefree minds there may exist a presentiment of dark powers within ourselves which are bent upon our own destruction. - E. T. A. Hoffmann

I resolved to make the fullest use of the power within me and describe as with a magic wand the circles within which all life around me should dance for my delight.

Was she then to be lost to me? Nay, for as she left this vale of sorrows, she had kindled the eternal love that now glowed within me. I now know that her death was the consummation of that love which, as she had told me, rules above the stars and has nothing in common with the things of earth. Such thoughts as these lifted me above my earthly self, and these days in the convent were truly the most blissful of my whole life.

"Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny — the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime,"