Alone herself, she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls. But
she had a warm, kind heart, and--she told me this herself--the sight of
the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget
her prejudice. "If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five," she
remarked, "I would not have refused the house to that angel face."

We all cherish a kindly memory of the vigorous, alert woman, with her
round, bright countenance and laughing eyes. She soon became very
intimate with my mother, and my second sister, Paula, was her special
favorite, on whom she lavished every indulgence. Her horses were the
first ones on which I was lifted, and she often took us with her in the
carriage or sent us to ride in it.

I still remember distinctly some parts of our garden, especially the
shady avenue leading from our balcony on the ground floor to the
Schafgraben, the pond, the beautiful flower-beds in front of Frau
Reichert's stately house, and the field of potatoes where I--the gardener
was the huntsman--saw my first partridge shot. This was probably on the
very spot where for many years the notes of the organ have pealed
through the Matthaikirche, and the Word of God has been expounded to a
congregation whose residences stand on the playground of my childhood.

The house which sheltered us was only two stories high, but pretty and
spacious. We needed abundant room, for, besides my mother, the five
children, and the female servants, accommodation was required for the
governess, and a man who held a position midway between porter and butler
and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name was
Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty years
old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the order he
had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had been taken