She felt most at home in the family of the Princess Hohenzollern,[2] who was spending the winter at Berlin. When, looking back to this time in later years, as Princess of Roumania, she wrote: “Had I only had an idea of all this, when I so enthusiastically admired the mother at Berlin. Or did I have a presentiment when I made friends with no one there but with Marie, and was nowhere so happy as in her family.” She also then shared in the studies of Princess Marie of Hohenzollern, now Countess of Flanders. The lectures which Professor Haagen held for them in the Museum were of particularly lively and lasting interest to her. [2] Mother of the present King of Roumania. It was here in Berlin that Princess Elizabeth met Prince Charles of Hohenzollern[3] for the first time. They say that as she was, according to her habit, rapidly jumping downstairs, she slipped on the last step, and that Prince Charles was able to prevent her from falling by catching her in his arms. [3] Present King of Roumania. _From a letter of Prince Herman to his Daughter at Berlin._ “NEUWIED, _23rd February 1861_. “It appears to me that you have seen and experienced much that is interesting if you review the variety of pictures which have passed before you during these last days. You can only learn an easy and versatile intercourse with people by constantly meeting different ones, for each has to be taken in a different way, according to his peculiarities. Goethe regards it as a proof of dulness, not cleverness, if one is bored in the society of others. He declares that we can learn from the most commonplace people, were it only not to be like them! You are a recruit in aristocratic ranks, and not the slightest failing must be detected in you. At Court you must learn the balancing step so that you may not lose your balance and fall downstairs, or morally stumble and upset. In youth all this is learnt in play, whereas it is a martyrdom to elderly people. But where one is gifted, as you are, with an endless source of internal happiness, all disagreeables which one experiences are but as a fleeting shadow over the sunshine of life. Since you went away joy has departed from this house! The gay little bird has flown, and is now fluttering from flower to flower. Sometimes it pricks itself with their thorns, but it flies on, careless of what is behind it. Still it avoids the thorns in future. Now, good-bye; may God bless you, you dear little runaway.” * * * * *