and myself to follow him.

Yet it was so delightful with my mother, the sun around which our little
lives revolved! I had no thought, performed no act, without wondering
what would be her opinion of it; and this intimate relation, though in an
altered form, continued until her death. In looking backward I may regard
it as a law of my whole development that my conduct was regulated
according to the more or less close mental and outward connection in
which I stood with her. The storm and stress period, during which my
effervescent youthful spirits led me into all sorts of follies, was the
only time in my life in which this close connection threatened to be
loosened. Yet Fate provided that it should soon be welded more firmly
than ever. When she died, a beloved wife stood by my side, but she was
part of myself; and in my mother Fate seemed to have robbed me of the
supreme arbitrator, the high court of justice, which alone could judge my
acts.

In Lennestrasse it was still she who waked me, prepared us to go to
school, took us to walk, and--how could I ever forget it?--gathered us
around her "when the lamps were lighted," to read aloud or tell us some
story. But nobody was allowed to be perfectly idle. While my sisters
sewed, I sketched; and, as Ludo found no pleasure in that, she sometimes
had him cut figures out; sometimes--an odd fancy--execute a masterpiece
of crocheting, which usually shared the fate of Penelope's web.

We listened with glowing cheeks to Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian
Nights, Gulliver's Travels and Don Quixote, both arranged for children,
the pretty, stories of Nieritz and others, descriptions of Nature and
travel, and Grimm's fairy tales.

On other winter evenings my mother--this will surprise many in the case
of so sensible a woman--took us to the theatre. Two of our relatives,
Frau Amalie Beer and our beloved Moritz von Oppenfeld, subscribed for
boxes in the opera-house, and when they did not use them, which often
happened, sent us the key.

So as a boy I heard most of the operas produced at that time, and I saw
the ballets, of which Frederick William IV was especially fond, and which
Taglioni understood how to arrange so admirably.

Of course, to us children the comic "Robert and Bertram," by Ludwig
Schneider, and similar plays, were far more delightful than the grand
operas; yet even now I wonder that Don Giovanni's scene with the statue
and the conspiracy in the Huguenots stirred me, when