In the summer holidays we often took journeys—­generally to Dresden, where our father’s mother with her daughter, our aunt Sophie, had gone to live, the latter having married Baron Adolf von Brandenstein, an officer in the Saxon Guard, who, after laying aside the bearskin cap and red coat, the becoming uniform of that time, was at the head of the Dresden post office.

I remember these visits with pleasure, and the days when our grandmother and aunt came to Berlin.  I was fond of both of them, especially my lively aunt, who was always ready for a joke, and my affection was returned.  But these, our nearest relatives, in early childhood only passed through our lives like brilliant meteors; the visits we exchanged lasted only a few days; and when they came to Berlin, in spite of my mother’s pressing invitations, they never stayed at our house, but in a hotel.  I cannot imagine, either, that our grandmother would ever have consented to visit any one.  There was a peculiar exclusiveness about her, I might almost say a cool reserve, which, although proofs of her cordial love were not wanting, prevented her from caressing us or playing with us as grandmothers do.  She belonged to another age, and our mother taught us, when greeting her, to kiss her little white hand, which was always covered up to the fingers with waving lace, and to treat her with the utmost deference.  There was an air of aristocratic quiet in her surroundings which caused a feeling of constraint.  I can still see the suite of spacious rooms she occupied, where silence reigned except when Coco, the parrot, raised his shrill voice.  Her companion, Fraulein Raffius, always lowered her voice in her presence, though when out of it she could play with us very merrily.  The elderly servant, who, singularly enough, was of noble family—­his real name was Von Wurmkessel—­did his duty as noiselessly as a shadow.  Then there was a faint perfume of mignonette in most of the rooms, which makes me think of them whenever I see the pretty flower, for, as is well known, smell is the most powerful of all the senses in awakening memory.

I never sat in my grandmother’s lap.  When we wished to talk with her we had to sit beside her; and if we kept still she would question us searchingly about everything—­our play, our friends, our school.

This silence, which always struck us children at first with astonishment, was interrupted very gaily by our aunt, whose liveliness broke in upon it like the sound of a horn amid the stillness of a forest.  Her cheerful voice was audible even in the hall, and when she crossed the threshold we flew to her, and the spell was broken.  For she, the only daughter, put no restraint on herself in the reserved presence of her mother.  She kissed her boisterously, asked how she was, as if she were the mother, the other the child.  Indeed, she took the liberty sometimes of calling the old lady “Henrietta”—­that was her name—­or even “Hetty.”  Then, when grandmother pointed to us and exclaimed reproachfully, “Why, Sophie!” our aunt could always disarm her with gay jests.