The next few days were the most gloomy and depressing of all, with the lying in state in the _chapelle ardente_, in which grandmamma seemed to have become something so distant and removed from me, all shrouded in lace, and with tapers burning round her, high up and scarcely to be seen from the steps of the catafalque on which we could only kneel and pray--no longer my own dear grandmamma round whom I might strew roses, but something cold and strange, and far-off, at which crowds came to stare--a mere show! I wanted to think of her still as I had seen her the evening before her death, glorified, as it were, and already belonging to that other and better world, on the threshold of which she stood; it was on this picture my thoughts loved to dwell, and on the memory of her last kiss, and of the magnificent storm which raged while she was drawing her last breath. Everything that had come afterwards was dull and commonplace in comparison--a pageant, out of which the loftiness and sanctification had departed! Out of this chilling atmosphere I withdrew then more and more into myself, cherishing these sacred recollections, and above all musing over my priceless treasure, the poem I had discovered, and which seemed to me like a message from grandmamma herself; so much must the words have meant to her, I fancied I could hear her voice speaking through them; and so little heed did I in consequence pay to what was going on around me, that of the actual funeral ceremonies, at some portion of which in any case I must have been present, I have no remembrance at all. I must have passed through it all as if in a dream, and there is altogether a blank in my mind concerning it. Aunt Sophie, the youngest sister of my mother, returned with us to Monrepos, and took up her abode with us for a time. She became betrothed, still in her deep mourning, to the Prince of Sweden, who suddenly made his appearance in our midst, I could not at all make out why. And I was just as much puzzled to know why, one evening when my aunt and Fräulein von Bunsen were playing Haydn’s “Seven Words from the Cross,” as arranged by Neukomm for piano and organ, the prince should so persistently have kept his eyes fixed on my aunt, who was only playing the piano, whilst as everyone knows, the organ, which Fräulein von Bunsen was playing, is the far more important part! He, however, never took his gaze off my aunt, who certainly looked very interesting with her well cut profile thrown up by the long black veil. Later on I understood a little better what it meant, after I had heard him sing “Adelaïde” to my aunt’s accompaniment, with all the power of his fine tenor voice, and with a fervour of expression which I have never heard since.