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contrast between its dingy walls and nauseous atmosphere and the bright rooms and pure air of the Grünebourg, was most offensive and disagreeable. The public schools in Germany are all day schools. Fortunately we had many holidays, but I entered it at the wrong moment, for the Head Master was about to resign, and the school was more or less in a state of transition and disorganisation. I may say that I learned nothing from my masters, who with the one exception of the teacher of history, a gentle and cultivated man, were unsympathetic and commonplace pedagogues. None of them had the knack of winning the affection of their pupils and of making them apply themselves to their work. Perhaps I should speak for myself only, but unlike Harrovians and Etonians I have the most unpleasant recollections of my school days. For this the masters were not alone responsible. Amongst all the schoolboys there was not one with whom I had anything in common. They were an uncouth, dull and uninteresting lot, and to this day I have never met one of them again. Young O’Hara and Malet, and the sons of the other English residents went to a private school.

In ’56 an episode occurred which convulsed our household. My Mother was on a visit for a few days to her brother Lionel who was taking the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, leaving us – my Sister Louisa, my younger Brother and Sister and myself – at the Grünebourg. In order to make my tale clear I must explain that the house looked north and south – my Mother’s bedroom looked north and mine south. It was a very hot summer and my room being oppressively sultry I took advantage of my Mother’s absence to sleep in her room, which was much cooler than mine. The second day after my Mother’s departure on being called in the morning by the head-footman who attended on me, I asked him whether he had looked in during the night as I had been awakened for a minute by someone opening the door. He expressed surprise and replied that he had not been in the room, but he added that the house had been entered by burglars who had left traces of their visit in the basement, where they had unsuccessfully tried to break open the door of the plate-closet. In reply to a question he assured me that as far as they had been able to ascertain nothing had been taken, in fact that no injury had been done beyond the smashing of a glass panel in the door of the plate-closet.

I rose at once, dressed in a hurry, summoned the servants together and cross-examined them to the best of my ability. Their answers tallied exactly with those of the head-footman so that I obtained no fresh information from them. Being then only seventeen years of age and having had no experience of any occurrence of the kind before, I was altogether unfit to deal with the situation. But it struck me at once that there was more in the affair than appeared at first sight, for it was incredible that burglars having effected an entrance into the house, and apparently not having been disturbed, should have left it empty-handed. Another strange feature of the business was that I should have been the only person awakened, and that the door of my room should have been opened with some object which it was impossible to divine.