intellect or beauty.

Our mother smiled at these affairs, and her daughters, as girls, gave
her no great trouble in guarding their not too impressionable hearts.

There was only one boy for whom Paula showed a preference, and that was
pretty blond Paul, our Martin's friend, comrade, and contemporary, the
son of our neighbour, the Privy-Councillor Seiffart; and we lived a good
deal together, for his mother and ours were bosom friends, and our house
was as open to him as his to us.

Paul was born on the same November day as my sister, though several
years earlier, and their common birthday was celebrated, while we were
little, by a puppet-show at the neighbour's, conducted by some master
in the business, on a pretty little stage in the great hall at the
Seiffarts' residence.

I have never forgotten those performances, and laugh now when I think
of the knight who shouted to his servant Kasperle, "Fear my thread!"
(Zwirn), when what he intended to say was, "Fear my anger!" (Zorn). Or
of that same Kasperle, when he gave his wife a tremendous drubbing with
a stake, and then inquired, "Want another ounce of unburned wood-ashes,
my darling?"

Paula was very fond of these farces. She was, however, from a child
rather a singular young creature, who did not by any means enjoy all the
amusements of her age. When grown, it was often with difficulty that
our mother persuaded her to attend a ball, while Martha's eyes sparkled
joyously when there was a dance in prospect; and yet the tall and
slender Paula looked extremely pretty in a ball dress.

Gay and active, indeed bold as a boy sometimes, so that she would lead
in taking the rather dangerous leap from a balcony of our high ground
floor into the garden, clever, and full of droll fancies, she dwelt much
in her own thoughts. Several volumes of her journal came to me after our
mother's death, and it is odd enough to find the thirteen-year-old girl
confessing that she likes no worldly pleasures, and yet, being a very
truthful child, she was only expressing a perfectly sincere feeling.

It was touching to read in the same confessions: "I was in a dreamy
mood, and they said I must be longing for something--Paul, no doubt. I
did not dispute it, for I really was longing for some one, though it was
not a boy, but our dead father." And Paula was only three years old when
he left us!

No one would have thought, who saw her delight when there were fireworks
in the Seiffarts' garden, o