ply rebellious at the
attitude of the German male, and determined never to marry. That is to
say the three younger girls; the oldest had married a tame puppy, and
anything less like a tyrant I never beheld. No American husband could be
more subservient. But there was no question that he belonged to a small
exceptional class: while his wife, with all the dominating qualities of
her father, was one of a rapidly increasing number of German women,
silently but firmly rebellious.

The Herr baron was a typical Prussian aristocrat and autocrat. The girls
could hardly have had less liberty in a convent. When they came from
their hotel to mine he escorted them over and often came in. Luckily he
liked me or I never should have had the opportunity to know them as well
as I did. Nor should I have been able to continue the acquaintance
after the day I wickedly induced them to run away with me to Copenhagen,
where we shopped, promenaded all the principal streets, then took ices
on the terrace of one of the restaurants. When we returned he was
storming up and down the platform of the station, and he fairly raved at
the girls. "And you dared, you dared, to go to Copenhagen, without
permission, without your mother, without me!" The girls listened meekly,
but whenever he wheeled laughed behind his military back. Then he turned
on me, but I called him a tyrant and gave him my opinion of his
nonsensical attitude generally. As I was not his daughter he gradually
calmed down and seemed rather to relish the tirade. Finally they all
came over to my hotel to tea.

"You see!" said one of the girls to me afterward. "I have not
exaggerated. Do you think I want another like that?" And, so far as I
know, they have never married.

I did not draw any of my characters on these four delightful girls, but
took the episode as a foundation for the incidents and characters that
grew under my hand after I got round to the story.

The episode of Georg Zottmyer was also told me by a German girl whom I
got to know very well in Munich, and who distantly suggested the
character of Gisela (that is to say in the very beginning. As Gisela
developed she became more like her own legendary Brunhilda).[1]

This young woman was as independent in her life and in her ideas as any
I ever met in England or the United States. But fortune had been kind to
her. Her father died just after her education was finished, and as he
left little money, she went to Brazil as governe