4 Thiergartenstrasse, which I have already mentioned.
The owner, Frau Kommissionsrath Reichert, had also lost her husband a short time before, and had determined to let the house, which stood near her own, stand empty rather than rent it to a large family of children.
Alone herself, she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls.

But she had a warm, kind heart, and--she told me this herself--the sight of the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget her prejudice.

"If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five," she remarked, "I would not have refused the house to that angel face." We all cherish a kindly memory of the vigorous, alert woman, with her round, bright countenance and laughing eyes.

She soon became very intimate with my mother, and my second sister, Paula, was her special favorite, on whom she lavished every indulgence.

Her horses were the first ones on which I was lifted, and she often took us with her in the carriage or sent us to ride in it.
I still remember distinctly some parts of our garden, especially the shady avenue leading from our balcony on the ground floor to the Schafgraben, the pond, the beautiful flower-beds in front of Frau Reichert's stately house, and the field of potatoes where I--the gardener was the huntsman--saw my first partridge shot.