And then luckily she went away, for I was beginning to freeze to the sheets with horror.

I got out of bed to write this.  You’ll be shocked too, I know.  The way royalties are snuffed out one after the other!  How glad I am I’m not one and you’re not one, and we can live safely and fruitfully outside the range of bombs.  Poor things.  It is very horrible.  Yet they never seem to abdicate or want not to be royalties, so that I suppose they think it worth it on the whole.  But Frau Berg was terrible.  What a bloodthirsty woman.  I wonder if the other boarders will talk like that.  I do pray not, for I hate the very word blood.  And why does she say there’ll be war?  They will catch the murderers and punish them as they’ve done before, and there’ll be an end of it.  There wasn’t war when the Empress of Austria was killed, or the King and Queen of Servia.  I think Frau Berg wanted to make me creep.  She has a fixed idea that English people are every one of them much too comfortable, and should at all costs be made to know what being uncomfortable is like.  For their good, I suppose.

  Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914.

Darling mother,

How splendid that you’re going to Switzerland next month with the Cunliffes.  I do think it is glorious, and it will make you so strong for the winter.  And think how much nearer you’ll be to me!  I always suspected Mrs. Cunliffe of being secretly an angel, and now I know it.  Your letter has just come and I simply had to tell you how glad I am.

  Chris.

This isn’t a letter, it’s a cry of joy.

  Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914.

My blessed little mother,

It has been so hot this week.  We’ve been sweltering up here under the roof.  If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better.  Just the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you cool.  You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck.  I can’t swish them away, because both my hands are busy.  I wish I had a tail.

Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests with some sternness that I brought them with me,—­the eggs, I suppose, in my luggage.  She is inclined to deny that they’re here at all, on the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany.  It is too well managed, is Germany, she says.  I said I supposed she knew that because she had seen it in the newspapers.  I was snappy, you see.  The hot weather makes me disposed, I’m afraid, to impatience with Frau Berg.  She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours.  If only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would come here and adapt her to being an electric fan!  I want one so badly, and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense volume of air, I’m sure.