When the sisters returned to the Wurtemberg Court, they were as lonely as ever, for they had become strangers to everyone, including the King and Queen, during their exile. But soon, the Emperor Nicholas having seen the one, asked for her hand in marriage for his brother Michael; and thus it was that the Princess Charlotte was sent to Russia in charge of a governess--for she was only fourteen years old--to finish her education and be received under the name of Hélène into the Orthodox Church as a preliminary to the wedding. And so grandmamma was left alone and but for the occasional society of her two brothers, more forsaken and disconsolate than ever. It was when she was eighteen, as I have said, that a change came into her life also, with her marriage. But the husband with whom she entered her new home was no young man, he was the widower of her aunt, and she had been accustomed to regard him in the light of an uncle,--one of the older generation, rather to be respected and looked up to than to be treated as an equal. So that my grandfather need have been at no pains to inspire her with awe for his person and frighten her into submissiveness. However, that there might be no mistake at all as to the position he intended to assume, the wedding-ceremony was no sooner over, and the newly-married couple alone in their travelling carriage, than he proceeded to light his pipe, and closing the windows, smoked hard in her face for a few hours, just to see if she would venture to remonstrate or complain! Needless to say, she was too well broken in by a long course of severity, to dare to utter a word of protest, and it seems to me that had her husband but known how joyless her youth had hitherto been, he must have tried rather to cheer her and raise her spirits, than to crush her still more by the assumption of so brutal an attitude. Unfortunately in Germany the custom still prevails, of trying to keep women in subjection. A foolish notion survives among us, that women ought to keep silence, and thus, while our wiser French neighbours demand of their women-folk to take the lead in all conversation, which they enliven and stimulate with their wit and brilliancy, the German on the other hand expects members of the other sex to be content to listen in silent admiration, needle in hand, while he holds forth ponderously on whatever subject he pleases. The natural reaction from this absurd tyranny is a sort of revolt of womankind, attended by exaggeration in the opposite direction--a tendency that certainly deprives its adherents of much of their former grace and charm, whilst it is to be questioned whether there be any compensating gain in strength. In all this we have undoubtedly fallen behind our ancestors, for in the old Germanic tribes not only was the entire rule and management of the household given up to women, but our rude forefathers also reverenced in them their best friends and counsellors, priestesses of the hearth and altar, superior