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The chaos in which the powers of the mind in tender years are usually enveloped denies me the ability to remember in clear sequence the domestic occurrences immediately after my father’s death; I recall only that my mother, contrary to her custom, was sorrowful and shed abundant tears; that a large, corpulent man, never seen before, constantly stayed in the house and called my mother ‘mutter;’ that this man fell ill, that he died, and that vessels were placed beneath the coffin to receive water continually dripping from it.

Concerning this man, I have received a complete explanation; he had been promoted to succeed my father at the fortress and is said to have intended to unite himself with his widow.

Yesterday’s events could not stand more clearly before my mind than I recall how good order in the house and tender care of the children, during my mother’s widowhood, constituted the dearest objects of her concern; I remember clearly that my brother and I already attended a school established for children of the better class in the town situated near the fortress, and how every day we carried with us a little food-