The young Princess Victoria Louise, now the Duchess of Brunswick, received her colonelcy when only seventeen, a few days after her Confirmation, which was the formal ending of her schooldays--the day when German girlhood of whatever class renounces its childhood for ever. “Confirmation!” said one rather “grumpy” gentleman of the court, a man of occasional cynical humour: “what does Confirmation mean? Why, for the boys it means henceforth permission to smoke cigarettes; for the girls, freedom to go to balls and parties--that’s what Confirmation means in Germany.” At the Prussian Court it signifies something rather strenuous, and all Hohenzollern Princes and Princesses are strictly prepared for it some months beforehand by the Court Chaplain. It is considered to be a very solemn moment of their lives, and at the ceremony each one of them must read aloud before the assembled congregation a _Glaubens-Bekenntniss_ or Confession of Faith, a declaration of their religious belief, written by themselves, together with their views of what that belief implies as to the guidance of their future lives. It is a very impressive, almost a painful ceremony, this effort of these unformed boys and girls to give expression to their idea of how to shape their future worthily. The day before the Confirmation, the candidate is examined in religious knowledge by the Chaplain, the Emperor and Empress being the only other persons present. All the near relatives come to the ceremony; and one very notable old lady was conspicuous at the confirmation of the Princess. This was the venerable widowed Grand-Duchess Louise of Baden--“Aunty Baden,” as she is known in the family. Daughter of the old Emperor, sister of the Emperor Frederick, mother of the present Queen of Sweden, this grey-haired, straight-backed old lady is a true Hohenzollern in character, of decided opinions and a restless, energetic mind. She still pays frequent visits to Berlin, occupying a suite of rooms in the palace of her late father overlooking the Linden, where the blind of one window remains permanently drawn, reminding the passer-by of the old monarch who daily stood there--as he once laughingly remarked, “because ‘Cook’ says I am there and we mustn’t disappoint the tourists"--to salute the Castle guard as it passed up to its barracks. “Aunty Baden” has no pity for modern nerves and modern fatigue. She belongs to the old school, to an age of tough fibre. At the opening of the Kaiser-Frederick-Museum, when a statue to the Emperor Frederick was also unveiled, this indomitable old lady examined everything with a fresh, vital curiosity which baffled fatigue, insisted on penetrating into every room, and studying the remotest Greco-Assyrian sculptures with the liveliest interest. Hardly a single scarab or the smallest picture escaped her notice.