Berlin has left me a lasting memory, because the nature of the recreations which I found there carried me back to the days of my childhood and my youth; only, very real princesses filled the part of my Sylphide. Old rooks, my eternal friends, used to come to perch on the lime-trees before my window; I threw food to them: when they had caught too large a piece of bread, they threw it up again with inconceivable dexterity to catch a smaller one, in such a way that they were able to take another a little larger, and so on up to the chief piece, which, held at the point of their beak, kept it open, without permitting any of the increasing layers of bread to fall. His meal over, the bird would sing after his fashion: _cantus cornicum ut secla vetusta._ I wandered in the desert spaces of frozen Berlin, but I did not hear beautiful voices of young girls issue from its walls, as from the old walls of Rome. Instead of white-bearded Capuchins dragging their sandals among flowers, I met soldiers making snow-balls. One day, on turning the corner of the wall of circumvallation, Hyacinthe[127] and I found ourselves face to face with so cutting an east wind that we were obliged to run across country to regain town, half-dead. We passed through enclosed grounds, and all the watch-dogs flew at our legs, pursuing us. That day, the thermometer went down to 22 degrees below freezing-point. One or two sentries at Potsdam were frozen to death. On the further side of the park was an old abandoned pheasantry: the Prussian princes do not go shooting. I crossed a little wooden bridge over a canal leading out of the Spree and found myself among the pine-wood columns which form the portico of the pheasantry. A fox, which reminded one of those in the mall at Combourg, came out of a hole contrived in the wall of the preserve, passed the time of day, and retreated into his coppice. What is known as the Park, in Berlin, is a wood of oaks, birches, beeches, limes and alders. It lies outside the Charlottenburg Gate, and is crossed by the high-road leading to that royal residence. To the right of the Park is an exercise-ground; to the left are booths.