All these long days had also brought something of sorrow. My Own’s oldest brother Karl was suddenly attacked by pneumonia, which carried him off in a week. My sister-in-law Lotti, the Countess Sizzo by marriage, lost her husband. The bereavement was not very severe. It had not been a wretched marriage, but not a happy one either; the two were incompatible and lived for the most part separated,—he in his home in Southern Tirol, she at Harmannsdorf. Karl’s daughter Mizzi, who was then sixteen, after his death came to live in her grandparents’ house and was always with us thenceforth. Her uncle Artur, whom she genuinely worshiped, had to take her father’s place. The liveliest intercourse was kept up with the neighboring castle of Stockern. There lived (and still live) my husband’s older brother Richard, nicknamed _Igel_, “hedgehog”; his wife Pauline, called _Das Weib_, née Ponz von Engelshofen, châtelaine of Stockern and mother of five children,—one daughter and four sons, the eldest of the sons born in 1871, the youngest in 1886, so that there was much fresh, gay youth; and, in addition, governesses, tutors, aunts, cousins, and other guests. Lively times were always going on there. Very often the whole train would come to Harmannsdorf, especially on occasion of birthdays, patron saints’ days, hunts, vintages, and harvest-homes; still more frequently we drove over to Stockern, or both families would join in excursions to near-by Rosenburg or some other place of resort. “Das Weib” was the last survivor of several brothers and sisters who in the war year of 1866 had fallen victims to the epidemic of cholera which had broken out in the country. The stories of that time when nine persons in the family and service of Stockern were carried off by the destroying angel in six days served as the basis for the episode “The Cholera Week” in my novel _Die Waffen nieder_. Now grass had grown over all that tragedy. Man’s memory is so terribly short. Stockern was now full of happy people, and we two contributed our mite to the gayeties. Uncle Artur was his young nephews’ favorite comrade, and “Tante Boulotte” was no spoil-feast either.