friend of Austria, never hesitating to declare his anti-Prussian sentiments in the presence of his Prussian guests. "A few months after the birth of his youngest child--a daughter--there was a sudden and complete transformation in the Baron's manner of life, the cause of which was entirely unknown. He separated from his wife, who returned to her paternal home, where she received from the Baron a large yearly income, but whither she was not permitted to take her children, two sons and the baby daughter, who remained in Hohenwald. No one knows the reason for this separation; the Baron has never by so much as a word alluded to it, and all the reports concerning it circulated in Dresden society, where the affair of course made a great deal of noise, are utterly without foundation. Even the Baroness, who died within a year after the separation, without seeing either husband or children again, never assigned to her parents any reason for her expulsion--for that is the only term to be applied to it--from Hohenwald. The relatives of the Baroness, who had hitherto always found a welcome at the castle, did all they could to effect a reconciliation between husband and wife, but they were repulsed by the Baron with such harshness and severity that they never renewed their efforts. My father, too, fared no better. Relying upon the claims of long friendship, he complied with the wishes of the king, who regretted that the Baron should have so treated his wife's relatives, and expressed a wish that my father would use his influence with his friend, so that if no thorough reconciliation could be brought about, at least the public scandal of a separation without a divorce might be avoided. With some reluctance my father undertook the task thus assigned him. He could hardly refuse to do so, although he had but small hope of any good result. He went to Castle Hohenwald, where the manner of his reception showed him the hopelessness of his mission.