I can still see the torchlight procession with which the Berlin students honoured the beloved and respected brothers, and which we watched from the Grimms’ windows because they were higher than ours.  But there is a yet brighter light of fire in my memory.  It was shed by the burning opera house.  Our mother, who liked to have us participate in anything remarkable which might be a recollection for life, took us out of our beds to the next house, where the Seiffarts lived, and which had a little tower on it.  Thence we gazed in admiration at the ever-deepening glow of the sky, toward which great tongues of flame kept streaming up, while across the dusk shot formless masses like radiant spark-showering birds.  Pillars of smoke mingled with the clouds, and the metallic note of the fire-bells calling for help accompanied the grand spectacle.  I was only six years old, but I remember distinctly that when Ludo and I were taken to the Lutz swimming-baths next day, we found first on the drill-ground, then on the bank of the Spree, and in the water, charred pieces, large and small, of the side-scenes of the theatre.  They were the glowing birds whose flight I had watched from the tower of the Crede house.

This remark reminds me how early our mother provided for our physical development, for I clearly remember that the tutor who took us little fellows to the bath called our attention to these bits of decoration while we were swimming.  When I went to Keilhau, at eleven years old, I had mastered the art completely.

I did, in fact, many things at an earlier age than is customary, because I was always associated with my brother, who was a year and a half older.

We were early taught to skate, too, and how many happy hours we passed, frequently with our sisters, on the ice by the Louisa and Rousseau Islands in the Thiergarten!  The first ladies who at that time distinguished themselves as skaters were the wife and daughter of the celebrated surgeon Dieffenbach—­two fine, supple figures, who moved gracefully over the ice, and in their fur-bordered jackets and Polish caps trimmed with sable excited universal admiration.

On the whole, we had time enough for such things, though we lost many a free hour in music lessons.  Ludo was learning to play on the piano, but I had chosen another instrument.  Among our best friends, the three fine sons of Privy-Councillor Oesterreich and others, there was a pleasant boy named Victor Rubens, whose parents were likewise friends of my mother.  In the hospitable house of this agreeable family I had heard the composer Vieuxtemps play the violin when I was nine years old.  I went home fairly enraptured, and begged my mother to let me take lessons.  My wish was fulfilled, and for many years I exerted myself zealously, without any result, to accomplish something on the violin.  I did, indeed, attain to a certain degree of skill, but I was so little satisfied with my own performances that I one day renounced the hope of becoming a practical musician, and presented my handsome violin—­a gift from my grandmother—­to a talented young virtuoso, the son of my sisters’ French teacher.