literally struck me dumb with amazement. On other occasions I
recollect pretending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that
I might be carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they
thought, the only remedy for my condition. And I repeated this,
because I found, to my surprise, that their attention under these
circumstances brought me into closer and more gratifying
proximity with them.

The most important event during this year of separation from my
family was, however, a short visit I paid to them in Prague. In
the middle of the winter my mother came to Dresden, and took me
hack with her to Prague for a week. Her way of travelling was
quite unique. To the end of her days she preferred the more
dangerous mode of travelling in a hackney carriage to the quicker
journey by mail-coach, so that we spent three whole days in the
bitter cold on the road from Dresden to Prague. The journey over
the Bohemian mountains often seemed to be beset with the greatest
dangers, but happily we survived our thrilling adventures and at
last arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into
entirely new surroundings.

For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to
Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic
attraction for me. The foreign nationality, the broken German of
the people, the peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines,
the harp-girls and musicians, and finally, the ever present signs
of Catholicism, its numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on
me a strangely exhilarating impression. This was probably due to
my craze for everything theatrical and spectacular, as
distinguished from simple bourgeois customs. Above all, the