home. I only know that we waked the next morning full of happy
recollections.

In the summer holidays we often took journeys--generally to Dresden,
where our father's mother with her daughter, our aunt Sophie, had gone to
live, the latter having married Baron Adolf von Brandenstein, an officer
in the Saxon Guard, who, after laying aside the bearskin cap and red
coat, the becoming uniform of that time, was at the head of the Dresden
post office.

I remember these visits with pleasure, and the days when our grandmother
and aunt came to Berlin. I was fond of both of them, especially my
lively aunt, who was always ready for a joke, and my affection was
returned. But these, our nearest relatives, in early childhood only
passed through our lives like brilliant meteors; the visits we exchanged
lasted only a few days; and when they came to Berlin, in spite of my
mother's pressing invitations, they never stayed at our house, but in
a hotel. I cannot imagine, either, that our grandmother would ever have
consented to visit any one. There was a peculiar exclusiveness about
her, I might almost say a cool reserve, which, although proofs of her
cordial love were not wanting, prevented her from caressing us or playing
with us as grandmothers do. She belonged to another age, and our mother
taught us, when greeting her, to kiss her little white hand, which was
always covered up to the fingers with waving lace, and to treat her with
the utmost deference. There was an air of aristocratic quiet in her
surroundings which caused a feeling of constraint. I can still see the
suite of spacious rooms she occupied, where silence reigned except when
Coco, the parrot, raised his shrill voice. Her companion, Fraulein
Raffius, always lowered her voice in her presence, though when out
of it she could play with us very merrily. The elderly servant, who,