and put just as I was into the footbag lying on the front of the carriage, which was entirely open, with not even a leather apron stretched across it.  If a stone got in our way or we received a jolt there was nothing to keep me from being thrown out.  But this notion did not for a single moment disturb my pleasure.  At a quick trot we rolled along through Alt-Ruppin toward Cremmen, and long before we reached this place, which was about half way along the journey, the stars came out and grew brighter and brighter and more and more sparkling.  I gazed enraptured at this splendor and no sleep came to my eyes.  Never since have I traveled with such delight; it seemed as though we were journeying to heaven.  Toward eight o ’clock in the morning our carriage drove up before my grandfather’s house.  Let me here insert the remark that my grandfather, with the help of his three wives, whom he had married a number of years apart, had risen first from a drawing teacher to a private secretary, and then, what was still more significant, had recently advanced to the dignity of a well-to-do property owner in Berlin.  To be sure, only in the Little Hamburg street.  The art of living implied in this achievement was not transmitted to any of his sons or grandsons.

We climbed the stairs and entered the door.  Here we were greeted by a homely idyl.  Pierre Barthelemy and his third wife—­an excellent woman, whom I later learned to esteem very highly—­were just sitting at breakfast.  Everything looked very cozy.  On the table was a service of Dresden china, and among the cups and pitchers I noticed a neat blue and white figured open-work bread basket with Berlin milk rolls in it.  The rolls then were different from now, much larger and circular in shape, baked a light brown and yet crisp.  Over the sofa hung a large oil portrait of my grandfather, just recently painted, by Professor Wachs.  It was very good and full of life, but I should have forgotten the expressive face and perhaps the whole scene of the visit, if it had not been for the black and sulphur-yellow striped vest, which Pierre Barthelemy, as I was later informed, regularly wore, and which, in consequence, occupied a considerable portion of the picture hanging above his head.

It goes without saying that we shared in the breakfast, and the grandparents, well-bred people that they were, did not show so very plainly that, on the whole, the visit, with its to-be-expected business negotiations, was for them in reality a disturbance.  True, there was all day long not a sign of tenderness toward me, so that I was heartily glad when we started back home in the evening.  Not until a great deal later was I able to see that the coolness with which I was received was not meant for poor little me, but, as already indicated, for my father.  I merely had to suffer with him.  To such an extremely solid character as my grandfather the self-assured, man-of-the-world tone of his son, who by a clever business stroke had acquired a feeling of independence and comfortable circumstances, was so disagreeable and oppressive, that my blond locks, on whose impression my mother had counted with such certainty, failed utterly to exert their charm.