Elvira did not hope any social successes for herself. She was conscious of her bashfulness and her lack of beauty. Small, with too large a head, a Schiller head, she was certainly not a pretty girl; besides, she was awkward in her movements, helpless in conversation,—no, as a woman she would assuredly never please, while she was convinced (a conviction which I shared) that I as such would achieve all sorts of triumphs. She contented herself with the part destined to her, to become the Sappho of the nineteenth century. A modest little pair of cousins, it must be confessed! So we were friends and swore lifelong fidelity to each other; we were playmates too. But he who at this word imagines that we played together with dolls or hoops, as would have befitted our age, is mistaken. We played “puff.” That was a game invented by us, named so by ourselves, with which we used to amuse ourselves, for hours at a time. It consisted in this: we acted a comedy. Elvira took the part of the hero, I of the heroine. The hero kept changing: now it was a French marquis, now a Spanish student, or a rich English lord, or a young navy officer, or a statesman who has come to rather mature years, often a king appearing incognito; but I always represented myself, the heroine was always Bertha Kinsky, mostly sixteen or seventeen years old, but in many combinations already getting elderly—say twenty-two or twenty-three. The comedy usually ended with a marriage; but there were occasions when the hero died—then, naturally, it was a tragedy.