Your father left town on Monday. . . . He did not return until the 27th, the morning of the Queen’s Birthday Drawing-Room. On that occasion I went dressed in white mourning. . . . It was a petticoat of white crape flounced to the waist with the edges notched. A train of white glacé trimmed with a ruche of white crape. A wreath and bouquet of white lilacs, without any green, as green is not used in mourning. The array of diamonds on this occasion was magnificent in the highest degree, and everybody was in their most splendid array. The next evening there was a concert at the Palace, at which Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, and Tamburini sang. I went dressed in [a] deep black dress and enjoyed the music highly. Seats were placed in rows in the concert-room and one sat quietly as if in church. At the end of the first part, the royal family with their royal guests, the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, and the Grand Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Weimar went to the grand dining-room and supped by themselves, with their suites, while another elegant refreshment table was spread in another apartment for the other guests. . . . Jenny Lind a little disappointed me, I must confess, but they tell me that her songs were not adapted on that evening to the display of her voice. On Sunday evening your father dined with Baron Brunnow, the Russian Minister, to meet the Grand Duke Constantine. It so happened that the Grand Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Weimar appointed an audience to Baron and Baroness Brunnow at seven, and they had not returned at half-past seven, when the Grand Duke and their other guests arrived. The Baroness immediately advanced to the Grand Duke and sunk on her knees before him, asking pardon in Russian. He begged her to rise, but she remained in the attitude of deep humiliation, until the Grand Duke sunk also on _his_ knees and gently raised her, and then kissed her on the cheek, a privilege, you know, of royalty.