"I have not been able to write for the last few days, but this letter must go to-day, that you may have it for a Christmas-greeting. Day before yesterday the cousins arrived with husbands and belongings,--Hildegard, with two children; Hedwig, with three, beside nurses and lady's-maids. Both mothers look like Aunt Thekla,--tall, slender, fair, and rather stately. They have rosy cheeks, abundant hair, and bright light-blue eyes, are vain of their looks, of their husbands and children, of their name and social position, and mutually endeavour to outshine each other in the splendour of their attire. With Magelone they wage a very amusing petty warfare. Their husbands, twin-brothers, are strikingly alike,--fair and stately like their wives, but better-natured, gayer, more at their ease. Eduard, Hedwig's husband, distinguished himself in the Schleswig-Holstein war, whence come his stiffened arm and several orders,--a _crève-coeur_, as Magelone maintains, for Hildegard, whose Karl has only won peaceful laurels as an orator at agricultural meetings. To-morrow afternoon the brothers of the sisters are coming. The festival takes place in the evening. "Grandpapa is unfortunately still obliged to be pushed from one room to another in his wheeled chair. His great-grand-children must be with him as much as possible, and when the three boys, respectively six, five, and four years old,--the little girls are still in arms,--are romping about the spacious drawing-room, his face clears up. His grand-daughters do not seem very near to him, and it must pain him at these family gatherings that he has no children to link him with the younger generation. "I had one distressing moment with him yesterday. Before the second breakfast he sends off the post-boy. Every inmate of the household brings or sends the letters, which grandpapa himself locks into the bag. I had a Christmas-gift to send to Lisbeth, and took the package to his room myself. How his eyes flashed at me as he read the address! "'A Christmas-gift for my little sister,' I replied to their mute inquiry. "'You have no sister, and no friendly correspondence with those people shall be carried on from my house!' grandpapa fairly roared. This was the voice of which Magelone had told me. But I took courage, and said, in a trembling voice indeed, and without looking up, 'Dear grandfather, I might have sent my package secretly----' "He stared at me, and his brow cleared. 'Do you love the child?' he asked. "'Yes, grandpapa!' I cried; 'and if you could see the dear little creature----' "'Enough, enough!' he interrupted me; and, laying the package aside, he added, 'It shall go, Johanna, and you have done well.'