Caroline Esterházy

Disparity of age, difference of rank, the utter poverty of the lover in looks, wealth, position, in everything but genius, these in themselves would be insuperable barriers to all but the most ardent reciprocal affection.

And Caroline Esterhazy does not even pretend to care for this shy, awkward, ugly, young old man, her tutor ever since she was eleven.

"Why do you never dedicate any of your pieces to me?" she has questioned him with unconscious cruelty, and hardly waited to hear his answer.

"What would be the use? All that I do is dedicated to you." But it is possible that the bitterness of unrequited love has awakened hitherto unknown depths in Schubert's somewhat shallow nature, and that he realizes the full significance in setting them to music of Goethe's noble words, "Who ne'er his bread with teardrops ate, who ne'er through mournful midnight hours upon his couch hath weeping sate, he knows ye not, ye heavenly powers." For now, before laying aside his pen, he makes a brief entry in the diary which he has lately been keeping.

The compensations of art are frigid ones at best.

How cold are thy baths, Apollo.

Lastly, blended with these phantasmic sounds and sights, the rosy smile of Caroline Esterhazy gleams across the silence.

And with a sudden reversion of feeling towards the hard realities of existence, the composer is recalled to himself.