Alluring and often inspiring, life had shaped itself around me, as we have seen up to this point. However, it was not allure, but rather the ever more strongly rooted conviction that one cannot unify two paths leading in opposite directions from each other, and that what I had ever more clearly recognized as my real calling could only be achieved in the midst of artistic and literary life, which finally convinced me to first take an indefinite leave from the Kammergericht, and finally to resign. The sort of employment that the usual legal career brought with it, and into which E.T.A. Hoffmann had wanted to direct me, had appeared unacceptable to me already in Naumburg. There was still a single direction, which would have put me on a secure economic basis, and would have left me leisure for my work; that was the career of an auditor, and certainly in Berlin. Twice, one after another, such positions opened up. The General Auditor at the time, President von Braunschweig, both times recognized that my application had a good foundation; but both times there were other candidates whom there was reason to prefer for Berlin. But no injustice would be done to me in this case; and so in the first case, an equal position in Erfurt or Magdeburg, in the other, a position as Garrison-Auditor in Stralsund, the latter offered in connection with a position as notary. President von Braunschweig estimated the total income of the position in Stralsund at more than 2,000 thaler. I thanked him — and now accepted my dismissal. For one entirely without means, and who in addition had to support his parents, the decision was far from easy. But to hold a hybrid position indefinitely without substantial effect on my vocation was evidently unfeasible. And how would it have been possible to have made my plans a reality in Stralsund or some other provincial town without a university, without a library, and without an opera!

With my exit, was the time and work that I had invested in my legal career fruitless, entirely lost? — Not at all.