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BIOGRAPHY. 19
ing: this was also the case with her obstinacy. It was
oue of her juvenile faults, as also to give saucy and’ pert
answers, which always irritated my father, so that he be-
came excited and angry, and not able to correct the delin-
quent with gentleness. But poor Fredrika got indeed so
many scoldings for mere trifles, that her mind becamie at
times embittered.
My mother felt annoyed at all this, and Fredrika always
forgetting the reprimands which she continually got, my
mother treated her rather severely, believing that this
would improve matters, and that, as Fredrika had an ex-
cellent memory for learning, she ought to have an equally
good memory in every thing that was told her. Strange
as it may appear, that memory can be as it were twofold ;
such was the case here, and Fredrika could not help it,
that every thing which she was told to remember was for-
gotten a moment afterwards.
Notwithstanding my mother’s severity, Fredrika enter-
tained for some time a really passionate love for her, and
tried every means to please her. My mother was always
very elegant in her deportment and toilet; she had ex-
ceedingly agreeable manners, and Fredrika’s admiring
gaze followed her every movement.
My father was very taciturn and reserved, and his tem-
per was melancholy and gloomy. During the disastrous
war which was raging in Finland in 1808, and ended in
its being lost to Sweden, he was more gloomy than ever.
In the evenings he was in the habit of walking incessantly
— sometimes for two or three hours together — up and
down in the dark, in the dining-room in town, for he
would not have the candles lighted; and we often imag-
ined that we heard him weeping. “ Bonne Amie’s” room
was next to the dining-room, and as long as my father was
walking there, we did not venture to go through it. When
tea was brought in at six o’clock, he broke off his walk,
but he resumed it as soon as he had finished tea.
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