The drawback to the life we were now leading, lay of course in its natural tendency to encourage mere dreaming, almost at the expense perhaps of one’s active duties, of all practical work. For me this might have been a special danger, had I not been preserved from it by the good sense, the clearsightedness, the spirit of self-sacrifice of my Mentor. Of herself she never thought at all. Therein lay the secret of her great power, of her unbounded influence. On her deathbed she could say:--“How good it is, when one’s whole life has been filled by one great affection!” For those who knew her best, her whole existence was summed up in those words. But did they also contain a hidden meaning, the key to a secret none had ever guessed, some page of quite unsuspected romance, an attachment which death or circumstances had cut short? I had sometimes wondered that she alone of all her sisters had remained unmarried, had therefore never known the happiness of having a home, a family of her own; but, like everyone else, I had grown accustomed to the idea that her devotion to my mother was so all-absorbing as to leave no room for any other affection in her heart. Most probably was it so, and that her last words did but refer to the friendship, the affection, to which she had devoted her whole life, identifying herself so entirely with the feelings, the hopes, the interests and aims of the family of which in the truest sense she had become a member, that she found within that circle ample scope for the exercise of all her energy, the satisfaction of all her wishes, nor ever for one moment regretted having formed no other ties. She died in the year 1877, after the Balkan war, that war on which hung the destinies of Roumania, and out of which the country came forth victorious and independent, and before her death she had come to pay me a visit there, appearing in her old character of an angel of peace and consolation. For it was in the saddest, darkest hour of my whole existence, that in which its whole joy and happiness, granted to me for so short a time, had been torn from me forever, and when my only wish was to be allowed myself to die also. In that moment of utter hopelessness, none knew as did this old friend of mine, in what manner alone to strive to reconcile me with life. Hers were the gentle words, the gentle touch, that can never hurt, that one can bear, even when one’s whole heart seems to be an open wound. “Bun de pus pe rana,”--“good enough to be put on a wound,” is a Roumanian proverb, that always recurs to me, in thinking of Fräulein Lavater, for it exactly describes the feeling one had when with her. Her hands were soft as satin, and in the moral or spiritual sphere, she had just the same exquisite softness of touch. Whilst others, even with the very best intentions, seemed only too often to bear heavily on a spot too sensitive to be breathed upon, every word and action of hers was like balm to the soul.