eath-wreath was placed on that noble
forehead the Genius again appeared, but he questioned only by his tears.
Then answered a voice 'Look up!' and the God of Christians appeared."

As a maiden of fourteen, Princess Louisa, through a providential
circumstance, became with her sister Friederika the guest of Frau Rath
Goethe in Frankfort on the occasion of the coronation of Emperor
Leopold. Goethe's famous mother considered herself highly honored in
being chosen as hostess to entertain the princesses. The occasion
furnishes some very interesting glimpses of the character of both those
famous women. Frau Goethe found the highborn sisters so simple-minded,
so unaffected in their manners, that she was delighted with them. Frau
Goethe, young with the young to the end of her days, entered into their
enjoyment of scenes and circumstances invested with the charm of novelty
for the light-hearted princesses. She never forgot the meeting with the
future Queen of Prussia, and often used to tell a story about the pump
in the rear of Goethe's house. When Louisa once espied the pump from the
back room, she exclaimed roguishly: "I wonder if we could make the water
rush out; how I should like to try." Upon a consenting wink, they rushed
to the back yard and pumped to their hearts' content. The highborn
lady-in-waiting was shocked and objected to their plebeian occupation,
but Goethe's mother threatened to turn the door key rather than permit
interference with the sport of her princely guests.

Bettina von Arnim, who was on terms of great intimacy with Goethe's
mother, amusingly described in a letter to Goethe a meeting with the
brother of the princesses, who had invited himself to eat bacon, salad,
and pancake at Frau Goethe's house.

After the unfortunate campaign of the allies, Prussia and Austria
against France in 1792, while the princes of Mecklenburg were with the
army, Louisa and her three sisters were with their grandmother at
Hildburghausen, comforting and cheering one another in those days of
political desolation. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, the poet, enjoyed the
distinction of the friendship of the princesses of Mecklenburg. Louisa,
at the age of sixteen, is thus described. She was like her sister
Charlotte, had "the same loving blue eyes," but their expression changed
more quickly with the feeling or thought of the moment. Her soft brown
hair still retained a gleam of the golden tints of childhood; her fair
transparent compl