In the one drawing-room, that which was known as the “sisters’-room,” as it had specially belonged to my aunts, three beds were put up, and here my mother and I were to sleep together with her youngest sister, for the house was so overfull that proper accommodation was wanting, the dining-room, the largest room of all, being converted into a _chapelle ardente_. Of this last detail I knew nothing. I had been so simply brought up, the ways of a Court were unfamiliar and even quite distasteful to me. Next morning I was up betimes, and without disturbing anyone I crept out into the garden, taking with me the first tablecloth that came to hand, and this I filled with all the roses I could gather, fresh fragrant roses, still wet with dew, to take to grandmamma. Without a word to anyone, I made my way upstairs very softly to her room, and began placing my roses in a big garland round her. I did not feel at all afraid at first, but in course of time the intense stillness began to affect me, so that I was quite glad when Fräulein von Preen, grandmamma’s lady-in-waiting, came into the room with one or two of the maids and helped me to arrange my flowers. The day passed slowly, chiefly taken up with giving orders for mourning, bonnets of the correct shape, with the point coming very low down on the forehead, and long crape veils, falling right over the heavy folds of the black woollen dresses with their long trains. I too was to have a little black woollen dress, and that made me sadder than ever, it seemed to me such a melancholy garb. The following morning I again got up as early as possible, feeling rather impatient to see my aunt go on sleeping so soundly, for she was never an early riser, and had not yet made up for the rest she had lost. But I hardly knew what to do with myself, having been told that I could not go to see grandmamma to-day, and I turned and twisted about restlessly in the room. All at once I caught sight of a sheet of grandmamma’s own special pale green note-paper, with something written on it in her hand-writing, lying on a table. Young as I was, I quite understood that one must not read every paper one sees lying about, my mother never even opened a letter addressed to me, so as to set me the example of the respect due to private correspondence. But this paper lay spread wide open for every one to see, and was evidently not a letter at all, that much was clear to me, notwithstanding my short-sight. It was certainly allowable, I told myself, to look at dear grandmamma’s hand-writing once more. It turned out to be a translation of some English verses,--a poem of Longfellow’s, which is known to everybody, but with which I first made acquaintance then, through the medium of grandmamma’s German version. The first verse of the original runs: