BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 69 



and we spoke together in French, since he spoke little English 

 and I understood little German." 



She had caught a bad cold, so that in spending some time 

 in seeking for a Russian bath, she missed seeing the Botanical 

 Garden, Museum, and Laboratory which she greatly regretted. 

 She says, "The effort ought to have been made." 



At the quaint old city of Nuremburg, in spite of her sore 

 throat and chest, and the intensely disagreeable weather 

 which greeted her with hail and snow, she found great plea- 

 sure in all the curiosities there displayed, the Roman tower, 

 the Castle, and the instruments of punishment used during 

 the Middle Ages; the fascinating houses and churches. Some 

 of these "infernal means of torture," with their brutal 

 humorous names, she depicted with her pencil. A sketch of 

 St. Lawrence's church spire adorns her manuscript. She was 

 amazed at the wretched taste displayed in restoring some of 

 the rooms in the Schloss, and their furnishings of "common 

 dark paper and mean furniture," but the wonderful views 

 across the country delighted her. She spent some time in 

 Albrecht Diirer's house. One little glimpse of the interior 

 which she gives might have been painted by Diirer himself: 



"An old man, the janitor's father, lives at the top of the 

 house. He is a distinguished glass painter. He is nearly 

 eighty years old. His room was scrupulously clean though very 

 simply furnished. His windows were adorned with bits of 

 painted glass, copies from Albrecht Diirer's paintings. In 

 the corner, between the stove and a window, were the easel, 

 stool, painting brushes, the old clock hung on the wall, a set 

 of pipes. The colors were in a little chest of drawers. The old 

 man must have been a lover of art, for a copy of the Sistine 

 Madonna hung on the wall. Two soft, lovely cats kept the 

 old man company. He had placed a sheet of paper on a chair 

 for one cat, but the other cat had to be satisfied with a stool 

 before the fire." 



She also visited the old Rathhaus, the courtyard of which 

 dates from 1340. The building, with its wooden ceiling and 

 quaint chandeliers, and its enormous paintings by Diirer, is 

 now used for concerts. At the Church of Our Lady, a wed- 



