Grandmamma’s own life had been anything but smooth and untroubled from her earliest years, and it is no wonder that when she one day later on sat down to write her recollections, she should have done so under the title--_Histoire de mes Peines_. Her parents’ married life had been excessively unhappy; her father having even, in order to rid himself of a wife he detested, gone to the length on one occasion of actually hiding a man in her bedroom, and then bursting in upon her followed by the whole Court, in the hope that his unsuspecting victim’s confusion might lend her an appearance of guilt! But his diabolical plot fell through, for, all helpless and defenceless as she was, the poor lady’s innocence was perfectly evident, and her accuser’s character only too well known for anyone to put faith in anything he said. It was shortly after this charming exploit that Prince Paul determined to send his daughters to school in France. I am not sure when it was exactly, whether at an earlier or later date, that he gave them into the care of such an ill-natured governess, that they had to suffer for the rest of their lives from the effects of her petty tyranny, grandmamma’s deafness having been caused, she always believed, from her having been forced by her tormentor to stand sometimes for a couple of hours at a time, barefoot in her nightdress on the cold stone floor, whilst her sister Charlotte’s digestion was ruined by her never being allowed to satisfy the cravings of her healthy young appetite. They were no better off during their schooldays in France. In the establishment in which their father placed them, the spirit of the Revolution still prevailed to such an extent, that everyone of aristocratic birth was looked upon with suspicion, and as for the title of princess, to bear that was little less than a crime! So that the poor little Wurtemberg princesses had a hard time of it, mistrusted and shunned by their schoolfellows, who refused even to let them join in their games, and played all sorts of mischievous tricks on them, whilst the governesses for their part vented their dislike in imposing on them the most unsuitable tasks--even of a menial description. Not only from grandmamma herself, but also from her sister, afterwards the Grand Duchess Hélène of Russia, with whom much of my own girlhood was spent, did I hear all about this. It was she who told me how often in her sadness and loneliness she would seat herself on the stairs, to watch the movements of the hands of the big clock opposite, as if that were her only friend and companion, listening through the long dreary hours to its melancholy ticking, and counting the slow monotonous swinging of the pendulum backwards and forwards.