stairs to call on a nice little professor's wife. Arrived at the top, I rang the bell, and out comes a great hulking maid, who looks down upon me from a height of three or four steps. 'Is Madame G——— at home?' Answer (stereotype), 'I don't know;' after a pause — 'Do you mean the Frau Professorin?' 'Yes, Madame G———.' On this out rushes a second maid, looks half stupid, half indignant — 'What, do you mean the Frau Geheimräthin?' The joke was now too good to drop. I said again, 'I mean Madame G———, as it seems you do not hear distinctly; take my card to Madame G——— I was admitted with the usual words, 'most agreeable,' and found the very pleasant Frau Professorin Geheimräthin, for she is both, whose servants seem ashamed of her name. Yet it is a name very illustrious in learning.
"Till a man is accroché on the court by some title, order, office, or what not, he may be fairly said not to exist. The Germans are becoming clamorous for freer institutions, but how much might they emancipate themselves! A vast deal of this servility is perfectly voluntary, but it seems in the blood. They dislike the king of Hanover as much as we do; but when Madame de L——— whispered to me at a ball, 'Voilà votre prince et seigneur,' and I replied in no whisper, 'Prince oui, mais grâce á Dieu, seigneur non.' She looked frightened, and so did all the ladies round her — and why? He could do them no more harm than me.
"In Dresden I met the grand duke of Saxe-Weimar, who told me the following anecdote on the authority of his mother-in-law the empress of Russia: 'When Paul and his wife went to Paris, they were called, as is well known, le Comte and la Comtesse du Nord. The Comtesse du Nord accompanied Marie Antoinette to the theatre at Versailles. Marie Antoinette pointed out, behind her fan, aussi honnêtement que possible, all the distinguished persons in the house. In doing this she had her head bent forward; all of a sudden she drew back with such an expression of terror and horror that the comtesse said, "Pardon, madame, mais je suis sûre que vous avez vu quelque chose qui vous agite." The queen, after she had recovered herself, told her that, there was about the court, but not of right belonging to it, a woman who professed to read fortunes on cards. One evening she had been displaying her skill to several ladies, and at length the queen desired to have her own destiny told. The cards were arranged in the usual manner, but when the woman had to read the result, she looked horror-struck and stammered out some generalities. The queen insisted on her saying what she saw, but she declared she could not. "From that time," said Marie Antoinette, "the sight of that woman produces in me a feeling, I cannot describe, of aversion and horror, and she seems studiously to throw herself in my way!"'
"The grand duke told very curious stories about a sort of second sight; especially of a Princess of S——— who was, I believe, connected with the house of Saxony. It is the custom among them to allow the bodies of their deceased relations to lie in state, and all the members of the family go to look at them. The princess was a single woman, and not young. She had the faculty, or the curse, of always seeing, not the body actually exposed but the next member of the family who was to die. On one occasion a child died, she went to the bedside and said, 'I thought I came to look at a branch, but I see the tree.' In less than three weeks the father was dead. The grand duke told me several other instances of the same kind. But this faculty was not confined to deaths. A gentleman whom the grand duke knew and named to me, went one day to visit the princess; as soon as she saw him she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but why have you your leg bound up?' 'Oh,' said her sister, Princess M———, 'it is not bound up; what are you talking of?' 'I see that it is,' she said. On his way home his carriage was upset and his leg broken.
"I was saying that the Italians would not learn German. Madame de S——— said, 'I perfectly understand that; I had a French bonne, and when a child spoke French better than German. When the French were masters in Germany, M. de St. Aignan was resident at the court of Weimar. He and other French officers used to come every evening to my mother's house. I never spoke a word, I never appeared to understand a word. When the news of the battle of Leipsig arrived, M. de St. Aignan escaped through our garden. I was alone when he came to ask permission, and I answered him very volubly in French. "Mais, mademoiselle," said he, astonished, "vous parlez le Français comme l'Allemand. J'ai toujours cru que vouz n'en comprenez pas un mot?" "C'est que je n'ai pas voulu," replied I.'
"This in a young girl who talked well and liked to talk, shows great resolution,
