The fact that the Empress was a grandmother and she herself an aunt made the Princess very thoughtful for a time. She indulged for some time in long fits of silence, pondering this new development. A few days after her nephew came into the world, as we were driving in the Wildpark together, she remarked with a certain wistful wonder, “This time last week I was not yet an aunt, and Mamma was not a grandmother. Poor Mamma!” The christening was of great interest to her, because the youngest Hohenzollern Princess is always chosen to carry the infant to the font. She practised this ceremony a few times with a cushion, to which was pinned a long table-cloth to present the white satin train which babes of the Hohenzollern race wear at the ceremony. This train is embroidered with the name of every prince or princess who has worn it; and a new strip has to be added for every christening, so that the imagination refuses to consider the length to which it must inevitably extend in the course of ages. It is carried by four ladies of noble birth, and is actually fastened, not to the infant itself, but to the white satin cushion on which the child is laid. Royal christenings are usually celebrated in the long Jasper Gallery in the New Palace, a magnificent apartment which, owing to its length, was the favourite scene of indoor sports for the Princess and her friends when wet weather prevented their indulgence outside. Only the week after the christening sack-races were held in the stately apartment, and the mirrors which had lately reflected the stately tread, the brilliant uniforms, and the trailing dresses of courtiers, now duplicated and reduplicated a seemingly endless procession of wildly-hopping maidens with jerking pigtails, who, shrieking with laughter and accompanied by many tumbles, bumped along over the marble pavement to the goal. The seventy-five _Stifts-Kinder_ had been invited to the palace; but the afternoon turned out hopelessly wet, so that the “Gymkhana” which had been planned had necessarily to take place indoors or not at all, and the Jasper Gallery proved itself an excellent place for egg-and-spoon races as well as for the needle-threading and bun-eating competitions.