I should like to mention each and every one of those whose faithful service was so invaluable to our family during the years in which we were tried by sickness and suffering; many were admirable in their untiring devotion, but the two I have spoken of above and beyond all the rest. No words could do justice to the tact, the discretion, the unwearied patience, with which their duties were fulfilled. Never did they utter a word of complaint, on any of those long and fatiguing journeys, all the responsibility of whose arrangements fell on them, and which had to be performed under circumstances of exceptional difficulty, with my mother in her crippled condition, having to be carried in and out of train and boat, and my father and brother also helpless invalids. To say nothing of the amount of luggage that was required for the whole party, nurse and lady’s maid, tutor, governess, and lady-in-waiting! And travelling was by no means so simple and easy a matter in those days. But Lang and Masset were equal to the circumstances, and managed it all without a hitch. For our journey from Bonn to Paris a whole railway-carriage had to be reserved, so that my mother, whose convulsive fits at that time followed one another in swift succession, barely giving her time between to recover consciousness, might rest undisturbed in the hammock put up for her. As for the preceding journey, that from Neuwied to Bonn, however difficult it may have been to plan, it was so successfully carried out, that to us children it was all unalloyed enjoyment, like a page out of a fairy tale! As my mother could not stand the shaking of the steamer, one of the Rhenish coal-barges had been chartered, thoroughly cleaned and fitted out with mats and awnings, and the deck strewn with fresh flowers everywhere, and in order that the little journey should not take too long, the barge was taken in tow by one of the Rhine-steamers. It was all too delightful, so Wilhelm and I thought, this novel style of travelling, and everything so amusing--the little cabin with its sky-light, and above all the lovely little dancing waves in the wake of the steamer. We were quite lost in the enjoyment of the hour, and had but a faint understanding of the cares weighing on the elders of our party, though those were brought before us again, when we reached the landing-stage, and saw our mother carried unconscious ashore by Lang and Masset. As in spite of all their care and the excellent arrangements made, she had lain in convulsions the whole time, they might well feel somewhat discouraged at this first step in the pilgrimage undertaken in quest of health and solace for our invalids. But such grave thoughts cannot altogether quell the natural high spirits of youth, and I remember the peals of laughter that greeted us from my Uncle Nicholas, my mother’s youngest brother, who was awaiting our arrival in the garden of the villa at Bonn, and who declared that he had