Papa is a little better. He came down yesterday for the first time for three weeks. The meeting was a touching one; papa himself, worn to a shadow, looking down so anxiously on the poor little pale face, that was gazing with rapture up in his.... Otto suffers more and more. He begins to have hallucinations, sees himself surrounded by hideous faces that threaten him.... He seems to have reached a degree of pain, beyond which it is impossible to go. His sufferings are indescribable. A little time ago, he said he had to pray each day that he might welcome death, for the thought of the parting was still too terrible to him; but now he begins to comfort himself with the thought that there is no real separation, and to rejoice that he may at last rest and be free from pain. And he has been giving all his instructions, telling us his wishes, and always coming back to the provision to be made for his own two special attendants.... Each new day is worse than the last.... Once he cried out:--“I cannot bear it!” but when mamma said:--“Yes, we will bear it together!” he grew quieter and murmured--“Father, Thy will be done!” ... Although the doses of laudanum are constantly being increased, he sleeps very little, the pain is too agonising.... Of mamma I say nothing. What she suffers, she keeps to herself; she says sometimes she feels as if a saw were at her heart, being slowly drawn backwards and forwards.” Otto had always taken special pleasure in following the mental development of the lives he read about. He found satisfaction in the thought that the activity of the spirit can neither be blighted nor repressed. Every fact or occurrence that seemed to bear on this theory interested him; the story of Kasper Hauser was a case in point, and delighted him greatly, whilst the inactive life of the poor young Duke of Reichstadt was simply incomprehensible to him--“To live to be twenty-two,--and have _done_ nothing!” he would exclaim, almost impatiently. There seemed at one moment to be danger of his being too severe in his judgment of others, but directly my mother pointed this out to him, he saw his mistake and took pains to avoid it. To the last his spirit remained active, and in the intervals of pain he was always busily employed. Close beside his pillow, near the little Testament that never left him, lay a case of the different instruments he used for painting and carving, and with them he fabricated all sorts of pretty things for us all. His strong sense of the beautiful, of grace and harmony, never deserted him, neither did the humour with which he had so often enlivened us. After the fiercest attack of pain, whilst all around him were still overcome by witnessing his struggles, he would suddenly make some witty remark, and would not rest content till he had brought us all to join in his laughter.