My own happiest hours were those spent with grandmamma. Oh! how we loved everything about her!--her house,--that pretty house, standing on a hill covered with rose-trees, so that it was a perfect bower of roses during the summer months, and inside fragrant the whole year round with the perfume of the flowers that filled it everywhere! She had at first taken another house in Wiesbaden, for she insisted on moving from Biebrich directly after her husband’s death, in order to give up the Castle to his eldest son, who then had this house built on purpose for her, and in it she lived the whole of her widowed life. It was called after her the “Paulinenpalais,” and bore that name still for many years after her death. But now it has been sold, has passed into other hands, and retains nothing of the charm that belonged to it in grandmamma’s time. How well I remember every nook and corner of it, each one endeared to me by some special association, and with grandmamma’s presence pervading it all,--the drawing-room we thought so lovely, with its oriental decorations, in imitation of the Alhambra, and her dear little boudoir, with its soft blue hangings, and the delicately scented note-paper on her writing-table, of the special pale green tint she always used, for the sake of her somewhat weak eyes. And what lovely fine crochet-work was done by those beautiful hands of hers, gloved or ungloved. One wore gloves much more in those days, it was considered a duty to take care of one’s hands, and would have been condemned as a mark of excessive ill-breeding, to hold out a hand that was not beautifully cared for, for others to kiss. Very rarely though did one give one’s hand at all. It is very different now-a-days, when young princes content themselves with a silent shake of the hand, and young princesses too find nothing to say, and put it on the ground of their shyness. My mother knew what it meant to suffer from shyness, she hardly ever entered the drawing-room in her youth without having shed tears beforehand, so terrible an ordeal was it to her, but she knew what would have awaited her had she not at once gone round the circle of guests speaking to each in turn. Nor did grandmamma’s deafness ever prevent her from entering into conversation with each person presented to her, finding the right thing to say to each one, whilst only her heightened colour betrayed to those who knew her well, the torture it was to her to go on talking thus, without hearing more than a chance word here and there of the other’s replies. It was in her drawing-room that I took unconsciously my first lessons in deportment, her way of holding a reception seeming to me so gracious and so natural, I felt that no better model could be found. To me she was invariably of the most exquisite kindness, but I should never have taken it into my head to be otherwise than extremely respectful towards her. I was never happier than when sitting at her feet, playing with the tips of her