His father, he went on, was from Konigsberg, had studied philology, and when he left the university had become a tutor in a distinguished Russian family.  He was the child of poor parents, and had to take the first opportunity which presented itself of earning his living.  So he went to Russia, where he lived for twenty years as a tutor in private families, and then as a teacher in a Moscow gymnasium.  He married late in life, an only child of German descent, who helped her middle-aged husband by a calm observance of duty and a mother’s love for his children.  “My mother was a remarkable woman.  She had dark eyes and hair, and an enthusiastic and devoted expression in her face, which made me feel sad, as a child, if I looked at her for long.  She spoke little, and then in a curious mixture of German and Russian.  Strangely enough, she always called herself a German, and spoke Russian like a foreigner; but later, when we went to Berlin, she discovered that she was really a Russia, and always wished she were back in Moscow, never feeling at home amid her new surroundings.  She was a Protestant like her father, but had inherited from her Russian mother a lingering affection for the orthodox faith, and she often used to go to the Golden Church of the Kremlin, whose brown, holy images had a mystical effect on her.  She loved to sing gypsy songs in a low voice.  She would not teach them to us.  She was always very quiet, and preferred being alone with us to any society or entertainment.”

When Wilhelm was four years old there came a little sister, a bright, light-haired, blue-eyed creature after her father’s heart.  She was named Luise, but she was always called Blondchen.  She was his only playfellow, as the irritable father in Moscow cared for no acquaintances.  His father’s one wish was to return to his home, but for a long time the mother would not have it so.  At last, in the year 1858, he accomplished his wish.  He was then sixty-three years old, and he represented to his wife that after his life of unremitting work, now in its undoubted decline, he had a right to spend the last few years in peace in his native land.  He possessed enough for his family to live on; the children would grow and get a better education than in Russia, and above all he wished to keep his Prussian nationality.  The mother yielded, and so they came to Berlin, where the father bought a modest house near the Friedrich-Wilhelm gymnasium.  This house was now Wilhelm’s property.  “We children liked Berlin very much.  I soon became independent and self-reliant, after school hours wandering in the streets as much as I pleased, and used to make eager explorations in all directions, coming home enraptured when I had found a beautiful neighborhood, a stately house, a statue of some general in bronze or marble.  I used to take Blondchen by the hand, and show her my discovery.  The Friedrichstadt with its straight streets interested us very much; I had a fancy that the houses were marshaled in battalions,