"I have decided to always put down what I hear of our Crown Princess, how the King loves her, and how our Crown Prince forgets his sad nature when he is with one so happy and gay, and all that the Berliners talk about."
Here Marianne paused and turned over some pages.
"I will skip," she announced, "because all on these pages is about other things. To-day I have read it all and have marked only that which will interest you."
"There are many things we hear of our Crown Princess," she then read. "She and the Crown Prince play many pranks upon the Countess von Voss, who loves etiquette and ceremony above all things. But that is on the surface; in her heart she adores the Crown Prince and the Princess Louisa, who is now like her daughter. As for them, they are full of mischief.
"All Berlin just now is talking of how our Crown Prince and Princess say 'thou' and not 'you' to each other, according to our sweet German custom of making a difference between friends and strangers.
"The Court, when this report spread, cried out in horror. It was not according to French etiquette.
"The King commanded his son before him.
"'What is this I hear?' he demanded, 'that you call the Crown Princess "thou"?'
"'You hear it upon good grounds,' answered our Crown Prince, with his slow, good-humoured smile, 'when a man says "du" (thou) the person to whom he speaks knows whom is being spoken to, but when I say "sie" (in German written "Sie" for "you,"—"sie" for "they") who can know whether I say it with a capital letter, or not?'