enough remained for comfortable maintenance, had been much diminished.

Such changes of outward circumstances are termed reverses of fortune,
and the phrase is fitting, for by them life gains a new form. Yet real
happiness is more frequently increased than lessened, if only they do not
entail anxiety concerning daily bread. My mother's position was far
removed from this point; but she possessed qualities which would have
undoubtedly enabled her, even in far more modest circumstances, to retain
her cheerfulness and fight her way bravely with her children through
life.

The widow resolved that her sons should make their way by their own
industry, like her brothers, who had almost all become able officials in
the Dutch colonial service. Besides, the change in her circumstances
brought her into closer relations with persons with whom by inclination
and choice she became even more intimately associated than with the
members of my father's family--I mean the clique of scholars and
government officials amid whose circle her children grew up, and whom
I shall mention later.

Our relatives, however, even after my father's death, showed the same
regard for my mother--who on her side was sincerely attached to many of
them--and urged her to accept the hospitality of their homes. I, too,
when a child, still more in later years, owe to the Beer family many a
happy hour. My father's cousin, Moritz von Oppenfeld, whose wife was an
Ebers, was also warmly attached to us. He lived in a house which he
owned on the Pariser Platz, now occupied by the French embassy, and in
whose spacious apartments and elsewhere his kind heart and tender love
prepared countless pleasures for our young lives.