age, just old enough to retain all sorts of things; and yet I
remember exceedingly little from that period, in fact but two events.
These I probably recall because a vivid color impression helped me to
retain them. One of the events was a great fire, in which the barns
outside the Eheinsberg Gate burned down. However, I must state in
advance that it was not the burning of the barns that impressed itself
upon my memory, but a scene that took place immediately before my
eyes, one only incidentally occasioned by the fire, which I did not
see at all. On that day my parents were at a small dinner party, clear
at the other end of the city. When the company was suddenly apprised
of the news that all the barns were on fire, my mother, who was a very
nervous person, immediately felt certain that her children could not
escape death in the flames, or were at least in grave danger of losing
their lives. Being completely carried away by this idea she rushed
from the table, down the long Frederick William street, and without
hat or cloak, and with her hair half tumbled down in her mad chase,
burst into our large front room and found us, snatched out of bed and
wrapped in blankets, sitting around on cushions and footstools. On
catching sight of us she screamed aloud for joy and then fell in a
swoon. When, the next moment, various people, the landlord's family
among others, came in with candles in their hands, the whole picture
which the room presented received a dazzling light, especially the
dark red brocade dress of my mother and the black hair that fell down
over it, and this red and black with the flickering candles round
about--all this I have retained to the present hour.

The other picture, or let me say, rather, the second little occurrence
that still lives in my memory, was entirely devoid of dramatic
elements, but color again came to my assistance. This time it was
yellow, instead of red. During the interim year my father made
frequent journeys to Berlin. Once, say, in the month of November, the
sunset colors were already gleaming through the trees on the city
ramparts, as I stood down in our doorway watching my father as he put
on his driving gloves with a certain aplomb and then suddenly sprang
upon the front seat of his small calash. My mother was there also.
"Really the boy might go along," said my father. I pricked up my ears,
rejoiced in my little soul, which even then longed eagerly for
anything a little out of the or