, the star of milk soup reigned supreme. Then everybody
struck, feigning lack of appetite.

But these were only exceptional conditions, of short duration.
Ordinarily we were well and very sensibly fed, a thing which we owed
less to our mother than to our housekeeper, a Miss Schroeder. Before
going any further I must tell about her. When we reached Swinemuende my
mother was still in Berlin taking treatment for her nerves, so that my
father was immediately confronted with the question, who should manage
the household in the interim. There were no local newspapers, so he
had to inquire around orally. After a few days a letter was brought by
messenger from the head forester's lodge at Pudagla, inquiring whether
the head forester's sister might offer us her services. She had
learned housekeeping in her brother's home. My father answered
immediately in the affirmative and for two days rejoiced in the
thought of being able to take into his home as housekeeper a sister of
a head forester, and from Pudagla, to boot. That afforded relief; he
felt honored. On the third day the Schroeder girl drove up to our house
and was received by my father. He declared later that he had kept his
countenance, but I am not quite sure of it, in spite of the
possibility that his good heart and his politeness may have made the
victory over himself easier. The good Schroeder girl, be it said, was a
pendant to the "princess with the death's head," who came to notice in
Berlin at about this time. What had caused the misfortune of the
latter (who was restored to her original appearance by Dieffenbach, by
a plastic surgical treatment, since become famous), I do not know. In
the case of the Schroeder girl, however, it was the smallpox. Now what
is smallpox? Everybody has seen persons who have been afflicted with
smallpox, and has considered the expression, "the devil has threshed
peas on his or her face," more or less apt. At least the expression
has become proverbial. In this case, however, the proverbial phrase,
if applied, would have been mere glossing over, for the Schroeder girl
had, not pits the size of peas, but scars half as broad as your hand,
a spectacle, the like of which I have never again encountered. Yet, as
already said, a contract was entered into, and a happier one was never
closed. The Schroeder girl was a treasure, and when my mother came home
six weeks later she said: "You did well to take her, Louis; disfigured
as she is, her eyes hav