familiar with him, too; than with any other members of the
ruling house, for Fraulein Lamperi, who was in a measure like one of our
own family, was always relating the most attractive stories about him
and his noble spouse, whose waiting-woman she had been.

Of Frederick William IV it was generally jokes that were told, some of
them very witty ones. We once came in contact with him in a singular
way.

Our old cook, Frau Marx, who called herself "the Marxen," was nearly
blind, and wished to enter an institution, for which it was necessary to
have his Majesty's consent. Many years before, when she was living in
a count's family, she had taught the king, as a young prince, to churn,
and on the strength of this a petition was drawn up for her by my
family. This she handed into the king's carriage, in the palace
court-yard, and to his question who she was, she replied, "Why, I'm old
Marxen, and your Majesty is my last retreat." This speech was repeated
to my mother by the adjutant who came to inquire about the petitioner,
and he assured her that his Majesty had been greatly amused by the old
woman's singular choice of words, and had repeated it several times to
persons about him. Her wish was fulfilled at once.

The memory of those March days of 1848 is impressed on my soul in
ineffaceable characters. More beautiful weather I never knew. It seemed
as if May had taken the place of its stormy predecessor. From the 13th
the sun shone constantly from a cloudless sky, and on the 18th the
fruit-trees in our garden were in full bloom. Whoever was not kept in
the house by duty or sickness was eager to be out. The public gardens
were filled by afternoon, and whoever wanted to address the people had
no need to call an audience together. Whatever rancour, indignation,
discontent, and sorrow had lurked under ground now came forth, and
the buds of longing and joyful expectation hourly unfolded in greater
strength and fuller bloom.

The news of the Paris revolution, whose confirmation had reached
Berlin in the last few days of February, had caused all this growth and
blossoming like sunshine and warm rain. There was no repressing it,
and the authorities felt daily more and more that their old measures of
restraint were failing.

The accounts from Paris were accompanied by report after report from
the rest of Germany, shaking the old structure of absolutism like the
repeated shocks of a battering-ram.

Freedom of the press was not y