Most hearty thanks for your warm, sympathetic words, and also for the splendid wreath sent by the Society of the Friends of Peace, which, with so many other gifts of love and tokens of respect, adorns the last resting-place of the deceased. There is _no_ consolation for such hours. What I have lost no one can truly realize who does not know how the inner bond that united us, joining every fiber of our two lives together, had been interwoven in the nineteen years of undivided, untroubled wedlock, so that with the uprooting of one life the thousands and thousands of roots of the other were torn from the ground. The profound loneliness which has come upon me through this loss is often scarcely to be endured, and at the present time I can hardly imagine how in this life, on this earth, I can ever again take root. One who has lived for nineteen years in such intimate relationship with a man like my husband cannot easily become accustomed to other persons. The pure, lofty idealism which—I may say—formed the very quintessence of his being and made him so extremely lovable, so winning, and so attractive to all who came into contact with him, I shall never again find anywhere so embodied as in him, and since he has gone from me I miss him always everywhere to such a degree that it is often simply unendurable for me to be with others. And yet the proofs of _unofficial_, genuine, heartfelt sympathy from so many good and noble people in these days has done me unspeakable good. To you also, my dear Baroness, my best and heartiest thanks once again for all your sympathy. Your sincerely devoted Natalie von Oldenburg A few years later she sent me a volume of poems dedicated to the memory of the departed and breathing a pathetic grief. And yet a third loss: On the 31st of October, 1895, Ruggero Bonghi, so beloved in our circle, died in Torre del Greco at the age of sixty-eight. Italy mourned in him the reformer of public education, the professor of philosophy, the editor of the _Nuova Antologia_, the founder and director of the orphan asylum at Anagni; we mourned the active apostle of our common cause, the man who from a lofty tribune had spoken these beautiful words: “We promoters of peace, who work for it with glowing zeal, have in the last analysis no other object than this,—that man shall become _wholly human_.” Our Austrian Union telegraphed the following words to Rome for the funeral: _Sincero dolore e riconoscenza eterna_. “Sincere grief and eternal gratitude.” XLVII FURTHER VARIED RECOLLECTIONS