be a very good advertisement for him. It might bring him,
he said, quite a lot of new business; especially if it
was known that he refused to help Cousin Willie in any
way or to have anything more to do with any of the rest
of us, and not to give us any money. He said that this
was a point of view which people could respect and admire.

So before he went home he said that we must not expect
to see or hear from him any more, unless, of course,
things should in some way brighten up, in which case he
would come back.




CHAPTER V

It is a long time--nearly three months--since I have
added anything to my memoirs. The truth is I find it very
hard to write memoirs here. For one thing nobody else
seems to do it. Mrs. O'Halloran tells me that she never
thinks of writing memoirs at all. At the Potsdam palace
it was different. We all wrote memoirs. Eugenia of Pless
did, and Cecilia did, and I did, and all of us. We all
had our memoir books with little silver padlocks and
keys. We were brought up to do it because it helped us
to realise how important everything was that we did
and how important all the people about us were. It was
wonderful to realise that in the old life one met every
day great world figures like Prince Rasselwitz-Windischkopf,