240 Ten Years of ray Life. 



During our stay in Mexico we had always kept up a lively 

 correspondence with our friends the Corvins. The Colonel, 

 who had a position in the United States Treasury, became 

 tired of greenbacks and seven-thirties, accepted a position as 

 special correspondent of the ' New York Times/ and returned 

 to Germany in 1867. He lived then with Mrs. Corvin in 

 Berlin, and we had arranged to meet somewhere in Switzerland, 

 where we intended to spend our summer together. 



When we were nearly ready to start my brother-in-law, 

 Prince Alfred, fell seriously ill, and the whole family was much 

 distressed and alarmed. Everybody liked Prince Alfred, for, 

 being a very good and kind father, his deatli would not only 

 have been deeply felt by all his children and relatives, because 

 they loved and respected him, but also because a very great 

 change would hjve resulted from it. 



The most celebrated physicians were fetched from Bonn, 

 but they agreed that Alfred was most dangerously ill, and that 

 there was little hope of his recovery. All the members of the 

 family and also the Duke of Croy arrived in Anholt, and on 

 Friday, April 3, Alfred received the holy sacrament. But from 

 that time he improved and began to recover slowly. At the 

 end of April he was out of danger, and on Tuesday, .May 5, 

 we left Anholt for Switzerland, taking the steamboat at Cologne. 



On our way we paid a visit to the ancestral castle of the 

 Salms, the former residence of the ' Rhingraves,' tliC Rhein- 

 grafenstein, which is now a ruin still belonging to the family. 

 As my husband had good reasons for not making it known who 

 he was, we had resolved to lay his title aside and to travel 

 under the name of Von Stein. 



Travelling through Basle to Constance we took there the 

 steamer, and arrived on May 9 ni Rorschach, in the Canton 

 St. Gall, Switzerland, where we 'met he Corvins, who had 

 arrived two days before us. 



Rorschach is a large village hard on the Lake of Constance, 

 which would be called a city in many parts of America. It is 

 iust opposite Friedrichshafen in V/iirtemburg, and situated at 

 the foot of a hill nearly three miles long, which rises from the 

 lake about two thousand feet high. I was not in a frame of 

 mind to enjoy anything, and that, I suppose, was the reason 

 that I did not then like the place, though the Corvins were de- 

 lighted with it. We alighted at the Hotel G-^rni, close to the 



