The idolising affection my mother bestowed on her elder brother, was felt for her in turn by her younger brothers and sisters. She was never tired of playing with them and of telling them the wonderful stories which she made up for their amusement. The announcement of their step-sister’s engagement and approaching marriage was received with characteristic comments by these little ones. The nine-year-old Helene wept bitterly, affirming that it was utterly impossible for her to live without Marie; Nicholas, a year younger, but always practical and reasonable, consoled himself with the thought of the beautiful gardens and fine collection of stuffed animals of which his sister would become possessor by her marriage to a Prince of Wied; and little Sophie, frankly indignant, exclaimed:--“It is too bad! I will tell mamma at once, and see if she will allow such a thing!” Those were bright and happy days that dawned on Neuwied, soon after my parents’ marriage, when my mother, herself in the heyday of youth, led the revels, supported by her young brothers, the gayest of the gay. Dances, shooting-parties, amateur theatricals, followed one another in rapid succession, and the woods echoed with song and laughter of the happy light-footed young people who scampered through them from morn till night. All this has been told in a family chronicle, written and illustrated by my father himself, and carefully preserved in our archives. But the story does not go beyond the year 1847; there it suddenly breaks off. The festival was over; the lights had all burnt out; the fun and frolic had come to an end, and a great cloud of sadness seemed to descend on us and envelop everything. My mother’s lameness; Uncle Maurice’s death; the dangerous illness of my brother Wilhelm; all these misfortunes, occurring almost simultaneously, plunged our whole household in gloom, and the gaiety and merry-making of those early days was never to return. Then began, with our journey to Heidelberg attended with so much discomfort and disappointment, the long series of those pilgrimages to consult the most renowned oracles of medical science, which entirely occupied our lives during several years. The celebrated Dr. Chelius, whose advice we now sought, certainly did restore my brother to health by the treatment he prescribed, but to my mother he could do no good at all. With the illogical prejudice of childhood, I took a great dislike to the famous doctor on that account, looking upon him as a most cruelly disposed individual, who was putting my mother to great pain for his own pleasure, but an anecdote I heard of him in later years invested him with a certain interest in my eyes and made me regret my hasty judgment.