The widow resolved that her sons should make their way by their own industry, like her brothers, who had almost all become able officials in the Dutch colonial service.  Besides, the change in her circumstances brought her into closer relations with persons with whom by inclination and choice she became even more intimately associated than with the members of my father’s family—­I mean the clique of scholars and government officials amid whose circle her children grew up, and whom I shall mention later.

Our relatives, however, even after my father’s death, showed the same regard for my mother—­who on her side was sincerely attached to many of them—­and urged her to accept the hospitality of their homes.  I, too, when a child, still more in later years, owe to the Beer family many a happy hour.  My father’s cousin, Moritz von Oppenfeld, whose wife was an Ebers, was also warmly attached to us.  He lived in a house which he owned on the Pariser Platz, now occupied by the French embassy, and in whose spacious apartments and elsewhere his kind heart and tender love prepared countless pleasures for our young lives.

CHAPTER II.

MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD

My father died in Leipzigerstrasse, where, two weeks after, I was born.  It is reported that I was an unusually sturdy, merry little fellow.  One of my father’s relatives, Frau Mosson, said that I actually laughed on the third day of my life, and several other proofs of my precocious cheerfulness were related by this lady.

So I must believe that—­less wise than Lessing’s son, who looked at life and thought it would be more prudent to turn his back upon it—­I greeted with a laugh the existence which, amid beautiful days of sunshine, was to bring me so many hours of suffering.

Spring was close at hand; the house in noisy Leipzigerstrasse was distasteful to my mother, her soul longed for rest, and at that time she formed the resolutions according to which she afterward strove to train her boys to be able men.  Her first object was to obtain pure air for the little children, and room for the larger ones to exercise.  So she looked for a residence outside the gate, and succeeded in renting for a term of years No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse, which I have already mentioned.

The owner, Frau Kommissionsrath Reichert, had also lost her husband a short time before, and had determined to let the house, which stood near her own, stand empty rather than rent it to a large family of children.

Alone herself, she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls.  But she had a warm, kind heart, and—­she told me this herself—­the sight of the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget her prejudice.  “If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five,” she remarked, “I would not have refused the house to that angel face.”

We all cherish a kindly memory of the vigorous, alert woman, with her round, bright countenance and laughing eyes.  She soon became very intimate with my mother, and my second sister, Paula, was her special favorite, on whom she lavished every indulgence.  Her horses were the first ones on which I was lifted, and she often took us with her in the carriage or sent us to ride in it.