ouse, whose waiting-woman she had been.

Of Frederick William IV it was generally jokes that were told, some of
them very witty ones. We once came in contact with him in a singular way.

Our old cook, Frau Marx, who called herself "the Marxen," was nearly
blind, and wished to enter an institution, for which it was necessary to
have his Majesty's consent. Many years before, when she was living in a
count's family, she had taught the king, as a young prince, to churn, and
on the strength of this a petition was drawn up for her by my family.
This she handed into the king's carriage, in the palace court-yard, and
to his question who she was, she replied, "Why, I'm old Marxen, and your
Majesty is my last retreat." This speech was repeated to my mother by the
adjutant who came to inquire about the petitioner, and he assured her
that his Majesty had been greatly amused by the old woman's singular
choice of words, and had repeated it several times to persons about him.
Her wish was fulfilled at once.

The memory of those March days of 1848 is impressed on my soul in
ineffaceable characters. More beautiful weather I never knew. It seemed
as if May had taken the place of its stormy predecessor. From the 13th
the sun shone constantly from a cloudless sky, and on the 18th the
fruit-trees in our garden were in full bloom. Whoever was not kept in the
house by duty or sickness was eager to be out. The public gardens were
filled by afternoon, and whoever wanted to address the people had no need
to call an audience together. Whatever rancour, indignation, discontent,
and sorrow had lurked under ground now came forth, and the buds of
longing and joyful expectation hourly unfolded in greater strength and
fuller bloom.

The news of the Paris revolution, whose confirmation had reached Berlin
in the last few days of February, had caused all this growth and
blossoming like sunshine and warm rain. There was no repressing it, and
the authorities felt daily more and more that their old measures of
restraint were failing.

The accounts from Paris were accompanied by report after report from the
rest of Germany, shaking the old structure of absolutism like the
repeated shocks of a battering-ram.

Freedom of the press was not yet granted, but tongues had begun to move
freely-indeed, often without any restraint. As early as the 7th of March,
and in bad weather, too, meetings began to be held in tents. As soon as
the fine spring days came we fo