The best rooms in the castle had been made ready for us, and thus I was “at home” under the roof of Harmannsdorf—a roof that was to protect our happiness for seventeen years longer. Now began for us a new life, a family life. Harmannsdorf was occupied by the parents and the three daughters; the eldest also, married to a Count Sizzo at Trent, was with us making a visit. The oldest son, Karl, secretary in the Department of Commerce, came every Saturday, and always spent his vacation at Harmannsdorf with his beautiful wife and his twelve-year-old daughter Mizzi, who was a pupil at the Sacré Cœur Convent. As such she was very piously inclined, and made the most strenuous endeavors to convert her Uncle Artur, for whom she had conceived an ardent affection and whose ecclesiastical lukewarmness caused her great anxiety as to the salvation of his soul. The second oldest brother, Richard, lived with his family at the castle of Stockern, a mile and a half distant, and of course the intercourse between Stockern and Harmannsdorf was very lively. Of other neighbors, whom we constantly saw, those we liked best were the owners of Mühlbach, Baron and Baroness Josef Gudenus, and the castellan of Maissau, the grand master of the huntsmen, Count Traun. From Vienna often came Artur’s former schoolmates; in short, the domestic and social life left nothing to be desired in agreeableness and liveliness of intercourse. And yet we managed to save out many hours for laborious solitude. For we kept up our scientific studies, were always reading the same books together, and also writing together; not that we collaborated in authorship,—each worked independently, and we each read the other’s writings only after they had been printed,—but we wrote at the same worktable. Even while we were in the Caucasus we had entered into correspondence with many of our contemporary authors. This correspondence was now carried on even more assiduously. My _Inventarium_ had brought me many unknown friends in literary circles. Thus one day we were surprised by an enthusiastic letter from Friedrich Bodenstedt. As the poet of _Mirza Schaffy_ had himself spent many years in the Caucasus, he took a keen interest in Artur Gundaccar’s Caucasian stories. M. G. Conrad of Munich, in whose newly founded monthly magazine, _Die Gesellschaft_, had appeared _Es Löwos_ and other things, had also engaged us in correspondence. Hermann Heiberg, Robert Hamerling, Count von Schack, Ludwig Büchner, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, Karl Emil Franzos,—those are some of the names of our correspondents; also Balduin Groller, who had long exchanged letters with B. Oulot in the Zugdidi days without suspecting that this _nom de plume_ concealed a woman, as he himself tells the story in one of his delicious feuilletons.