His religious views I do not accept, but I believe his strictly orthodox belief was based upon conviction, and cannot be charged to any odious display of piety to ingratiate himself with the king.  It was in the time of our boyhood that Alexander von Humboldt, going once with the king to church, in Potsdam, in answer to the sneering question how he, who passed for a freethinker at court, could go to the house of God, made the apt reply, “In order to get on, your Excellency.”

When Strauss met us in the street and called to us with a certain unction in his melodious voice, “Good-morning, my dear children in Christ!” our hearts went out to him, and it seemed as if we had received a blessing.  He and his son Otto used to call me “Marcus Aurelius,” on account of my curly blond head; and how often did he put his strong hand into my thick locks to draw me toward him!

Strauss was in the counsels of the king, Frederick William IV, and at important moments exercised an influence on his political decisions.  Yet that somewhat eccentric prince could not resist his inclination to make cheap jokes at Strauss’s expense.  After creating him court-chaplain, he said to Alexander von Humboldt:  “A trick in natural history which you cannot copy!  I have turned an ostrich (Strauss) into a bullfinch (Dompfaffer)”—­in allusion to Strauss’s being a preacher at the cathedral (Dom).

Fritz, the worthy man’s eldest son, came to see me in Leipsic.  Our studies in the department of biblical geography had led us to different conclusions, but our scientific views were constantly intermingled with recollections of the Lennestrasse.

But better than he, who was much older, do I remember his brother Otto, then a bright, amiable young man, and his mother, who was from the Rhine country, a warm-hearted, kindly woman of aristocratic bearing.

Our mother had a very high opinion of the court chaplain, who had christened us all and afterward confirmed my sisters, and officiated at Martha’s marriage.  But, much as she appreciated him as a friend and counsellor, she could not accept his strict theology.  Though she received the communion at his hands, with my sisters, she preferred the sermons of the regimental chaplain, Bollert, and later those of the excellent Sydow.  I well remember her grief when Bollert, whose free interpretation of Scripture had aroused displeasure at court, was sent to Potsdam.

I find an amusing echo of the effect of this measure in Paula’s journal, and it would have been almost impossible for a growing girl of active mind to take no note of opinions which she heard everywhere expressed.