The following winter we (that is, my mother and brother and I) spent in Rome. It had come about thus. The just-dethroned Queen of Naples, with her suite, had spent this summer at the Weilburg in Baden as guests of Archduke Albrecht. The historic tragedy that had preceded, the defense and loss of Gaeta, had made but little impression on me; I only listened with interest to the stories that were told of it by the queen’s chief steward, an old _principe_, who often visited us. It was he who depicted to us the life of foreigners in Italy, especially in Rome, so temptingly, and urged us so strenuously to come there next winter that we let ourselves be prevailed upon. The prospect took my fancy greatly. Yet, to my shame, I must avow that what attracted me was not eternal Rome with the magic of its historic memories, but the portrayals of Roman society life. And it remained so during our stay. What made most impression on me there—what was to me “the important thing”—was not the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum, but the Monte Pincio with its elegant Corso, the Teatro Costanza with its opera season consisting of two alternating operas (one of them _Il Trovatore_), and the balls and soirées that we attended in the palaces of the Roman magnates or in the drawing-rooms of the colonies of foreigners. I did not bring away deep impressions in any respect from that stay in Rome; it was reserved to a time many years later for me to take in, with some comprehension, the enchantment which this classic soil must exert upon any half-way receptive mind. Our friend of Baden days, the Neapolitan _principe_, once invited us to an excursion to his home city, and took us from there to Pompeii, the Blue Grotto, and the marvelous Capo di Monte, where he owned a villa—but it was rather dilapidated, as was he himself for that matter. When he came out next with a proposal of marriage, at the close of the season when we were already packed up for our journey, I said “no” without hesitation. I would not conjure down upon myself a second time the fate which I had newly escaped—that of becoming the wife of an unloved old man. Oh yes, if my suitor’s twenty-five-year-old son, the black-eyed Duca di ..., who quite pleased me, had appeared as suitor, I do not know—but he did not take it into his head; I think he was more inclined to feel an antipathy to me, for he must have seen into his father’s plans, and a second marriage on the father’s part would presumably have been extremely unwelcome to the son. Not till afterward did we learn that in our circle it had been generally assumed that the elderly _principe_, who loaded us with attentions, had even in Baden been my unacknowledged fiancé. From Rome we returned to Baden, where the life of last year’s season was repeated; and in the following winter, 1864, we went to Venice to go “into the world” again there.