On a monday morning in February 1843, Eduard Mörike enjoyed a unique musical experience, significant alike for its evocation of past memories and its foreshadowing of subsequent literary creation. He was at the home of David Friedrich Strauß in Sontheim, on the edge of Heilbronn. Strauß and another of Mörike's boyhood friends, the composer Friedrich Kauffmann, had surprised Mörike in Cleversulzbach the preceding Saturday and taken him to meet Strauß's bride, the former operatic mezzo-soprano Agnes Schebest. The sensational career which Agnes had sacrificed for marriage to Mörike's friend, reports of her beauty and “demonic charm,” rumors concerning her personal life in the past, and indications of Strauß's restlessness in marriage had made Mörike look forward to this introduction for some months with tense anticipation. But the first twenty-four hours of the visit had now passed happily, rich in the spontaneous sociability and informal musical enjoyment that Mörike so passionately loved. Just a few minutes earlier the unexpected arrival of Klärchen Mörike in a peasant costume had completely mystified all of the company but her brother.