mine certainly was to me. My heart rejoiced when I perceived that every
one shared this appreciation. At the time of my birth she was thirty-
five, and, as I have heard from many old acquaintances, in the full glow
of her beauty.

My father had been one of the Berlin gentlemen to whose spirit of self-
sacrifice and taste for art the Konigstadt Theater owed its prosperity,
and was thus brought into intimate relations with Carl von Holtei, who
worked for its stage both as dramatist and actor. When, as a young
professor, I told the grey-haired author in my mother's name something
which could not fail to afford him pleasure, I received the most eager
assent to my query whether he still remembered her. "How I thank your
admirable mother for inducing you to write!" ran the letter. "Only I
must enter a protest against your first lines, suggesting that I might
have forgotten her. I forget the beautiful, gentle, clever, steadfast
woman who (to quote Shakespeare's words) 'came adorned hither like sweet
May,' and, stricken by the hardest blows so soon after her entrance into
her new life, gloriously endured every trial of fate to become the
fairest bride, the noblest wife, most admirable widow, and most faithful
mother! No, my young unknown friend, I have far too much with which to
reproach myself, have brought from the conflicts of a changeful life a
lacerated heart, but I have never reached the point where that heart
ceased to cherish Fanny Ebers among the most sacred memories of my
chequered career. How often her loved image appears before me when, in
lonely twilight hours, I recall the past!"

Yes, Fate early afforded my mother an opportunity to test her character.
The city where shortly before my birth she became a widow was not her
native place. My father had met her in Holland, when he was scarcely
more than a beardless youth. The letter informing his relatives that