When I came back from St. Petersburg everything was changed, my dear father dead, and quite a different way of living to be entered on by my mother and myself, she being restricted henceforth to her dower for her own use, the estates of course passing into my brother’s hands, and simply being administered by her until his coming of age. We could now no longer keep open house as in the old days, in which the carriage had scarcely departed that took away one party of guests, when already and perhaps quite unexpectedly another would appear round the corner bringing a fresh relay. It was a quiet and rather lonely life that began thus suddenly for us three women, but no less full of interest, thanks to the one of us, to our dear Fräulein Lavater! We were hardly an hour of the day apart from one another, she and I; when the weather made it impossible for us to go out, if the wind was raging or the snow falling fast, then we contented ourselves with walking up and down indoors, pacing the rooms sometimes for hours, subjects of conversation never failing, her well-stored mind always ready to provide some fresh topic, and her marvellous swiftness of intuition enabling her to place herself at another’s point of view, and participate in phases of thought and feeling quite new to her. I had but just returned home after a lengthy absence, in which I had travelled much, seen many new countries, and met numbers of celebrated and interesting people. She meanwhile had remained quietly at home, surrounded daily by the same scenes, the same faces. And yet, how infinitely richer and fuller she had contrived to make her life, that inner life, which is in truth independent of and superior to all influences from without!