Sohn made a picture of my brother Wilhelm and myself, at four and five years of age, hand in hand; such a speaking likeness, that as we stood beside it holding a big wreath of flowers, when it was given to my father on his birthday, he kept looking from the painting to us, and then back again to the picture--quite puzzled for a moment, he assured us, as to which were the real children and which their portrait! Such restless beings as small children can never be very easy to paint; but Sohn succeeded wonderfully in catching the expression on each little face,--my brother’s serious and dreamy, with an almost stolid determination to keep quiet, and mine, all life and movement, with sparkling eyes and a dancing smile, that betokened anything but the requisite immobility of _pose_. It was an amusing contrast; Wilhelm stood firm as a rock, whilst all my efforts to keep still as I was bidden only made me tremble from head to foot with impatience, and at one sitting resulted in my fainting away after I had actually accomplished the feat of keeping in the same position for five consecutive minutes! I remember how alarmed the artist was, when I suddenly fell from my chair to the floor, in a dead faint, and how concerned he was about me, reproaching himself with the unnatural constraint imposed on my mercurial nature by the sittings. But what surprised him most of all, was to witness the means employed to bring me round; as I recovered consciousness, a sip of cold water, a little piece of black bread were given me by my mother to revive me, and Sohn, who was not then so well acquainted with the Spartan simplicity of our bringing up, felt amazed, as he afterwards told us, at the homeliness of the measures. Little princesses, he thought, were always fed on dainties, and would not condescend to eat anything less appetising than cake!