And then the long
avenues and all the woods of Bruehl put on their Autumn robes of crimson,
and flame-colour, and golden brown; and the berries reddened in the hedges;
and the Autumn burned itself away like a gorgeous sunset; and November came
in grey and cold, like the night-time of the year.
I was so happy, however, that I enjoyed even the dull November. I loved the
bare avenues carpeted with dead and rustling leaves--the solitary
gardens--the long, silent afternoons and evenings when the big logs
crackled on the hearth, and my father smoked his pipe in the chimney
corner. We had no such wood-fires at Aunt Martha Baur's in those dreary old
Nuremberg days, now almost forgotten; but then, to be sure, Aunt Martha
Baur, who was a sparing woman and looked after every groschen, had to pay
for her own logs, whereas ours were cut from the Crown Woods, and cost not
a pfennig.
It was, as well as I can remember, just about this time, when the days were
almost at their briefest, that my father received an official communication
from Berlin desiring him to make ready a couple of rooms for the immediate
reception of a state-prisoner, for whose safe-keeping he would be held
responsible till further notice.
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