This house was now Wilhelm's property. "We
children liked Berlin very much. I soon became independent and self-
reliant, after school hours wandering in the streets as much as I
pleased, and used to make eager explorations in all directions,
coming home enraptured when I had found a beautiful neighborhood, a
stately house, a statue of some general in bronze or marble. I used
to take Blondchen by the hand, and show her my discovery. The
Friedrichstadt with its straight streets interested us very much; I
had a fancy that the houses were marshaled in battalions, as if by
an officer on parade, and that when he gave the word 'March,' they
would suddenly walk away in step, like the soldiers on the parade
ground. I explained this to my sister, and often when we were in our
own street she would call out 'March!' to see if the long row of
houses would not begin to move. However, we liked the old part of
Berlin better, where the streets, with their capricious and serpent-
like windings, reminded us of the crooked alleys of Moscow. The
streamlets of the Spree exercised a powerful attraction over us.
Blondchen thought they played hide-and-seek with children, who would
run through the streets to search for them. They came suddenly into
sight where one would least expect to see them, in the yard of a
house in the Werderschen Market, behind an apparently innocent
archway on the Hausvogtei Platz, at the backs of houses whose fronts
betrayed no existence of any water near.
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