My room made me shudder. What? Was this really the setting which had been prepared to receive the freshness of my seventeen years! A student of Bonn, where the prince had graduated, might have liked it, but a girl, who had only recently become a young woman!... Impossible. Try, then, to imagine a fairly large room, the walls fitted half-way up with small cupboards of dark wood with glass doors, and blue curtains behind which I never wished to look! Certain pieces of furniture were Gothic in style. In the centre of this paradise stood an immense glass case full of souvenirs of the prince's travels; stuffed birds with long beaks, armour, bronzes, ivories, Buddhas and pagodas; my heart sickened at the sight. And, worse than all, there was no private entrance or annexe, only a narrow dark corridor, which was used by the servants. To get to my room I had to pass through that of the prince, which was approached through a kind of salon; all the rooms communicated and showed not a vestige of taste. Massive old furniture upholstered in rep a century old was offered to the eyes of youth! All was old, ordinary, sombre. Hardly a flower, nothing comfortable, nothing matching. As to a bathroom, there was not a sign of one. There were only two baths in the whole palace; they were far away from each other, and of positively archaic construction. And, as for the rest--it is better left unsaid! My first active objection was to this anti-hygienic organization, and the lack of necessities for my immediate use. This state of things almost broke my heart. I was told, however, that the illustrious grandparents were quite content with what had been given me. One knows that use is a second nature. Princess Clémentine did not notice the things which troubled me, and even the glass case with the stuffed birds charmed her. She admired her son's collection, fortunately without knowing or understanding all that it contained, as in our palace of Budapest I saw some very unique pieces; souvenirs of Yoshivara which a young woman could not look at without blushing, even after an expert hand had lifted the veil from her inexperienced eyes. What a school! However, thanks to the Bacchic régime organized by my husband, things went on indifferently well after the storm of our début in domesticity.