In fine weather the Princess sometimes rode in the forest, but during the second and third year of her visit to Cadinen she devoted herself entirely to bathing and did not ride as well. As, however, there were twenty riding-horses available, I always got up at half-past five, and rode alone with a _Sattel-Meister_ through the beautiful forest, which was of quite a different nature to that of Potsdam. It had a wild delightful freshness, with dimpling brooks appearing out of the greenery; great rocks and boulders stood at the turn of every path, with ferns growing from their crevices. The roads were not so good as those to which we had been accustomed, as they were full of tenacious and slippery beds of clay, and quite dangerous after rain, as were the fourteen little wooden bridges which crossed the wimpling stream which meandered aimlessly but beautifully through the trees. But when it was impossible to ride in the forest, there were the cornfields, and the stubble-fields from which the oats had been cleared were magnificent for a good stretching gallop. Those early rides lengthened the day a good deal. At five o’clock the _Lampier_, the old man who trimmed the lamps and cleaned the shoes, would knock softly at my door according to orders. I would rouse up hastily and dress, and then creep warily past the rooms where every one slept, and down the back staircase into the yard, where, in the morning sunshine, the wrinkled old _Hühner-frau_ was feeding her flock of ducks and chickens; then, slipping like a conspirator through the wet bushes into the stable-yard round the corner, I would come upon the smiling _Sattel-Meister_ in his neat uniform, standing beside two horses held by stable-boys. We would bow to each other in ceremonious German fashion, mount, and away into the glory of the dewy morning; for however wet and stormy the after part of the day might be, the mornings were always fair and smiling. Curtains of filmy cobwebs, threaded with beadlets of dew, spanned every twig, while gorgeous beds of lupines ranging from white through pale and deep heliotrope to dark purple, great upstanding masses of campanulas, tall yellow foxgloves, and other flowers unknown to me bordered the field paths through which we rode. The shimmering yellow of the bearded rye, the darker reddish-brown of the wheat, rippled like a sea by the breath of morning, the vivid emerald of the potato fields, the glorious chrome and sulphur of the yellow lupines grown as cattle fodder, mingled with the subtle green of the forest trees, and the long-drawn-out blue thread of the distant Baltic, all dappled and gleaming in the dawn, blended together in a riot of luminous colour. The peasant women working in bands of twenty or thirty among the potatoes would lift up their friendly brown faces, and wave a hand and smile as we galloped past. Occasionally we came unexpectedly on one of them kneeling before a tiny wooden shrine almost hidden in the standing corn.