Explore "The Romance of the Canoness" by Paul Heyse on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Several weeks have passed since I wrote the last lines. When I laid the sheet in the portfolio -- a music portfolio Frau Luise had left, and in which I usually kept some of the airs from Gluck's operas arranged for the piano -- I was startled by the bulk of the MS., and asked myself: "Will any one have patience to read all this? And why should you add to it?"
Ah, if you were a professional author, and, instead of a truthful narrative of the life of the woman so dear to you, could transform her fate into a genuine romance, skillfully blending fact and fiction, or if you at least possessed the gift of describing these experiences in hues so fresh and vivid that no one could help finding her as charming as she is to you! But you are only a clumsy, simple chronicler of events, and the man for whom you intend these records will smile at the _labor improbus_ you have bestowed on so superfluous a work and at your innocent idea that you were thereby doing him a favor.