seemed to me desirable only to make a wreath of for my adornment. As an evil chance would have it, so soon as the year 1854—consequently I was only eleven years old—Emperor Franz Joseph espied his cousin Elisabeth, engaged in conversation with her, and laid his august person at _her_ feet. I was not exactly unhappy (there are plenty more fairy princes), but thenceforth I took a lively interest in Elisabeth of Bavaria, sought for portraits of her, thought she bore some resemblance to me, and imitated her way of doing her hair. You see, my actual vehement passion for my young liege had died out some time since. _Chiodo caccia chiodo_; the Italians use this proverb to illustrate the fact that one love expels another. On my eleventh birthday I had been taken to the theater for the first time. “The White Lady”[2] was given. Ah, but that George Brown! (“What joy to be a soldier!”) Yes, that is the comeliest profession—next to that of opera tenor. For anything more captivating than that singer,—I still remember his very name, Theodor Formes, so the impression must have been deep,—anything more chivalrous I had never dreamed of. The prince destined for me must look like that. He would not even have to be a prince; only, if possible, in case he was not a tenor,—I would not have given Herr Formes the mitten,—at any rate a soldier. In telling this I see that I was a silly girl, to be sure, but not a genuine child. That is probably due to my not having had any playmate of my own age, but living only in the world of books, whose heroes were themselves not children but grown people, whose fortunes turned mostly upon love and marriage. The most important thing in the universe, anyhow, was my little person. The course of the world was only the machinery whose wheels were all geared for the purpose of preparing a radiant good fortune for me. Was I alone such a foolish, conceited child, or is this center-of-the-world feeling a natural feeling in general among children and creatures of limited intelligence? Is modesty a noble fruit which ripens only on the tree of experience and knowledge? It is just by this that the type of a man or of a class may be authentically gauged—by _what appears important_. Of notable importance to me in those days of childhood, besides the all-overtopping “I,” were the Christmas festival; the great spring house-cleaning; the Old Ladies’ Home at Brünn; chestnut-gathering in the paths of the Augarten, carpeted with autumn leaves; Fritzerl’s visits, my mother’s beautiful singing, this mother’s axiomatic great love for me, and my love for her, which was so great that when she went to Vienna for two or three days I would sob for hours as if my heart were broken.