1 files changed, 10229 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/35541.txt b/35541.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de739de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35541.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10229 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Erlach Court, by Ossip Schubin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Erlach Court
+
+Author: Ossip Schubin
+
+Translator: A. L. Wister
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2011 [EBook #35541]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERLACH COURT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/erlachcourt00schuiala
+
+   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                     POPULAR WORKS FROM THE GERMAN,
+                    Translated by MRS. A. L. WISTER.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+   The Alpine Fay. By E. Werner. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   The Owl's Nest. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   Picked Up in the Streets. By H. Schobert. 12mo. Extra cloth, $1.25.
+   Saint Michael. By E. Werner. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   Violetta. By Ursula Zoege von Manteuffel. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   The Lady with the Rubies. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   Vain Forebodings. By E. Oswald. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   A Penniless Girl. By W. Heimburg. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   Quicksands. By Adolph Streckfuss. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Banned and Blessed. By E. Werner. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   A Noble Name; or, Doenninghausen. By Claire von Gluemer. 12mo. Extra
+     cloth. $1.50.
+   From Hand to Hand. By Golo Raimund. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Severa. By E. Hartner. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   The Eichhofs. By Moritz von Reichenbach. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   A New Race. By Golo Raimund. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   Castle Hohenwald. By Adolph Streckfuss. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Margarethe. By E. Juncker. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Too Rich. By Adolph Streckfuss. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   A Family Feud. By Ludwig Harder. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   The Green Gate. By Ernst Wichert. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Only a Girl. By Wilhelmine Von Hillern. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Why Did He Not Die? By Ad. Von Volckhausen. 12mo. Extra cloth.
+     $1.50.
+   Hulda; or, The Deliverer. By F. Lewald. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   The Bailiff's Maid. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
+   In the Schillingscourt. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   At the Councillor's; or, A Nameless History. By E. Marlitt. 12mo.
+     Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   The Second Wife. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   The Old Mam'selle's Secret. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Gold Elsie. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   Countess Gisela. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.50.
+   The Little Moorland Princess. By E. Marlitt. 12mo. Extra cloth.
+     $1.50.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+*** For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent by mail, postage paid,
+upon receipt of price by
+
+           J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers, Philadelphia
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ERLACH COURT
+
+
+
+                       TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
+                                   OF
+                             OSSIP SCHUBIN
+
+
+
+                                   BY
+                           MRS. A. L. WISTER
+
+
+
+
+
+                              PHILADELPHIA
+                        J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+                                  1889
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+             Copyright, 1889, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+
+   CHAPTER
+       I.--Expected Guests.
+
+      II.--Baron Rohritz.
+
+     III.--The Arrival.
+
+      IV.--Stella.
+
+       V.--An Experiment.
+
+      VI.--A Ruined Life.
+
+     VII.--A Rainy Evening.
+
+    VIII.--A Love-Affair.
+
+      IX.--Found.
+
+       X.--Freddy's Birthday.
+
+      XI.--Crabbing.
+
+     XII.--Disaster.
+
+    XIII.--Idyllic.
+
+     XIV.--A Departure.
+
+      XV.--Scattered.
+
+     XVI.--Zalow.
+
+    XVII.--Winter.
+
+   XVIII.--Sophie Oblonsky.
+
+     XIX.--Paris.
+
+      XX.--Therese de Rohritz.
+
+     XXI.--An Austrian Host.
+
+    XXII.--French Inferiority.
+
+   XXIII.--Prince Zino Capito.
+
+    XXIV.--A Music-Lesson.
+
+     XXV.--A New Acquaintance?
+
+    XXVI.--Five-O'clock Tea.
+
+   XXVII.--A Change at Erlach Court.
+
+  XXVIII.--A Paris Letter.
+
+    XXIX.--A Storm and its Consequences.
+
+     XXX.--A Sleepless Night.
+
+    XXXI.--Glowing Embers.
+
+   XXXII.--Therese the Wise.
+
+  XXXIII.--Stella's Failure.
+
+   XXXIV.--Rohritz Dreams.
+
+    XXXV.--A Sprained Ankle.
+
+   XXXVI.--Lost Again.
+
+  XXXVII.--The Fanes' Ball.
+
+ XXXVIII.--Found at Last.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             ERLACH COURT.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+                            EXPECTED GUESTS.
+
+
+Erlach Court,--a vine-wreathed castle, not very imposing, on the
+Save,--a pleasant dining-room, with wide-open windows through which
+thousands of golden stars are seen twinkling in the dark blue of a July
+sky, while the air is laden with the fragrance of acacia- and
+linden-blossoms. Beneath a hanging lamp, around a table whereon are
+finger-bowls and the remains of a luxurious dessert, are grouped six
+persons,--the master of the house, Captain von Leskjewitsch, his wife,
+and his seven-year-old son and heir, Freddy, a Fraeulein von
+Gurlichingen, whose acquaintance Frau von Leskjewitsch had made twenty
+years before and whom she had never since been able to shake off, and
+two gentlemen, Baron Rohritz and General von Falk.
+
+The general is the same youthful veteran whom we have all met
+before in some Viennese drawing-room or in some watering-place in
+Bohemia,--accredited throughout Austria from time immemorial as
+excellent company, dreaded as an incorrigible gossip, and notorious as
+a thorough idler. He often boasts that in thirty years he has never
+once dined at home; he might add, nor at his own expense. He is never
+positively invited anywhere, but since he has never been turned out of
+doors he is met everywhere. Absolutely free from prejudice in his
+social proclivities, he is equally at home in aristocratic society and
+in the world of finance; in fact, he rather prefers the latter; the
+dinners there are better, he maintains.
+
+In spite of his seventy years, he is still as erect as a
+fir-tree,--dressed in the most youthful style,--occasionally, although
+with a half-ironical smile, alludes in conversation to 'us young men,'
+and dances at balls with the agility of a boy.
+
+Baron Rohritz, who is scarcely six-and-thirty, already ranks himself,
+on the contrary, for the sake of his personal ease, with the old men.
+Tall and slender, with delicate, clearly-cut features, he is a
+remarkably distinguished figure, even in the circle to which he
+belongs. Although his moustache is brown, his hair is already very
+gray, which women find extremely interesting, especially since there is
+said to be some connection between this premature change of colour and
+an unfortunate love-affair. The finest thing about his face is his
+deep-set blue eyes; but since he uses an eye-glass, is near-sighted,
+and often nearly closes his eyes, there is something haughty in his
+look, which produces a chilling effect. When he smiles his expression
+is very attractive, but he smiles only rarely, and shows to the best
+advantage in his treatment of dogs, horses, and children.
+
+Fraeulein von Gurlichingen, commonly called Stasy,--the diminutive of
+her baptismal name, Anastasia, and a play upon her perpetual state of
+ecstatic excitement,--is an old maid, who was once accounted a great
+beauty, and in consequence is fond of wearing golden bands around her
+romantically frizzed curls. Her languishing, light-blue eyes were once
+compared to forget-me-nots sprinkled with sugar, and her complexion is
+suggestive of Swedish kid dusted with violet powder. She was young
+twenty years since, and has forgotten to stop being so. She once nearly
+married a prince of the blood, and has lately been jilted by an
+infantry-officer. She has come to Erlach Court to recover from this
+last blow, perhaps in hopes of eventually obtaining a recompense for
+the loss of the captain.
+
+Little Freddy is a very pretty, spoiled child, in a sailor suit, with
+bare legs very much scratched; and the master and mistress of the house
+are two genial people, who eight years previously, both having outlived
+the bloom of their early illusions, although she was only six-and-twenty
+and the captain thirty, had "patched together their tattered lives,"
+which means that they had married each other, not so much in the hope of
+being happy themselves, as in that of making two other fellow-beings
+miserable.
+
+Although, however, they had thus married for pique, and though each had
+brought to the union nothing save a remnant of unfortunate love for
+somebody else, although they quarrelled with each other continually,
+they got along together not much worse than two-thirds of the married
+people whose union has been the result of passionate attachment.
+
+All were waiting for the after-dinner coffee, which the mistress of the
+mansion, in dread of spots, never allowed to be served in the
+drawing-room, except on state occasions. Its appearance was
+unpardonably delayed to-day, and the famous Erlach Court sociability
+was beginning to degenerate into yawning ennui.
+
+With the exception of Baron Rohritz, who had been occupied the entire
+time in gazing with half-closed eyes into the clouds of blue smoke from
+his cigar, all present had done their best to enliven the prevailing
+mood: the general had told anecdotes from the 'Fliegende Blaetter,'
+Freddy had succeeded in producing a particularly charming noise by
+running a wet forefinger around the rims of various wineglasses,
+Fraeulein Stasy had suggested a poetic comparison between dry storms and
+the tearless anguish of a stricken heart, and the married pair had
+squabbled with special earnestness about the most diverse matters,
+first about the potato-rot, then about a problematical constitution for
+Poland; and yet the conversation had failed to become fluent.
+
+For a few minutes an oppressive silence had prevailed; the husband and
+wife, usually equal to any emergency in this direction, had ceased even
+to quarrel. The ticking of the watches was almost audible, when the
+servant brought in on a salver the contents of the post-bag which had
+just arrived.
+
+"While the captain hastily opened a newspaper, that he might read aloud
+to the nervous Stasy, with a harrowing attention to details, the latest
+cholera bulletins, Frau von Leskjewitsch leisurely opened two letters:
+the first came from a Trieste tradesman and announced the arrival of a
+late invoice of the best disinfectants, the second apparently contained
+intelligence of some importance. After she had read it, Frau von
+Leskjewitsch laid it, with a pleased expression, upon the table.
+
+"Children," she exclaimed,--it was a habit of hers thus to apostrophize
+people well on in years, for, except Freddy, who was not yet eight,
+and the general, who dyed his hair, all present were more or less
+gray-headed,--"children, our circle is about to receive an addition; my
+sister-in-law has just written me that she accepts our invitation and
+will arrive here to-morrow or the day after."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed the captain, who on hearing this news quite forgot
+to go on teasing Stasy, and suppressed three entire cholera-telegrams.
+"I shall be delighted to see my little niece."
+
+Freddy said, meditatively, "I should like to know what my aunt will
+bring me."
+
+The rest of the party received the joyful tidings without emotion,
+partly because the long-looked-for coffee at that moment made its
+appearance, and partly because of the other three Stasy alone had any
+personal acquaintance with the Baroness Meineck--as the captain's
+sister was called--or her daughter. After the coffee had been cleared
+away, and whilst the master and mistress of the house were arguing
+outside in the corridor, most uselessly and most energetically, as to
+the train by which the expected guests would arrive, the general,
+who was playing his usual evening game of tric-trac with Rohritz,
+sighed,--
+
+"Our comfort is all over."
+
+Rohritz raised his eyebrows inquiringly: "Do you mean that in honour of
+these fresh guests we shall be obliged to put on a dress-coat at dinner
+every day?"
+
+"Not exactly that," said the general; "the ladies themselves are not
+too much given to elegance; but"--the general's face lengthened--"we
+shall be obliged to be cautious in our conversation."
+
+Rohritz smiled significantly. "Double sixes!" he exclaimed, throwing
+the dice on the green cloth and moving his men with cunning calculation
+on the backgammon-board.
+
+Meanwhile, the garrulous general continued, without waiting to be
+questioned: "Leskjewitsch is patient with his sister, and is
+excessively fond of his niece, but, between ourselves,"--he chuckled to
+himself,--"Leskjewitsch is a fool!"
+
+If anything gave him more satisfaction than to live at the expense of
+others, it was to be witty, or rather malicious, at their expense.
+Rohritz thought this bad form, and was silent.
+
+"I do not know the ladies personally," the general went on, rubbing his
+hands, "but for originality"--here he tapped his forehead with his
+forefinger--"neither mother nor daughter is far behind the captain. The
+mother is an old blue-stocking, and has been travelling all over the
+world for the last ten years, collecting materials for an historical
+work upon the Medicines, or whatever you choose to call them----"
+
+"The Medici, perhaps?" Rohritz interpolated.
+
+"Very likely; I only know that there was an apothecary in the family,
+and that there were pills in their scutcheon, and that the worthy
+Baroness's work is to be eight volumes long," said the general.
+
+Stasy, who had been leaning back in a luxurious arm-chair, moved to
+tears for the hundredth time over the last chapter of 'Paul and
+Virginia,' her favourite book,--the death of the heroine, she said,
+touched her especially because she could so easily fancy herself in
+Virginia's place,--now laid her book aside, since her tears seemed to
+arouse no sympathy, and joined in the conversation:
+
+"You are talking of the Meinecks?"
+
+"Yes. Are you personally acquainted with the ladies?" asked the
+general.
+
+"Yes,--not very intimately, though. I always held myself a little aloof
+from them, but last summer we were at the same country resort,--I was
+with a sick friend at Zalow,--and I saw something and heard a great
+deal of the Meinecks."
+
+"And are all the strange things that are said of them true?" asked the
+general.
+
+"I really do not know what is said of them," replied Stasy, "but it
+certainly would be difficult to exaggerate their peculiarities. The
+Baroness, unfortunately too late in life, has arrived at the conclusion
+that the continuance of the human species is a crime. One of her
+manias consists in giving _a tort et a travers_, wherever she may
+chance to be, short lectures, gratis, upon the American Shakers and
+their system. But, with all her zeal, she has hitherto succeeded in
+making but few proselytes. Even her elder daughter, who was for some
+years a fanatical adherent of her mother's doctrines, lately married an
+artillery-officer. Stella, the younger sister, whose acquaintance you
+are to make, dislikes having a brother-in-law in the artillery. The
+Baroness's distaste was not for the quality of her son-in-law, but for
+marriage itself. She appeared at the wedding in deep mourning, and but
+for the remonstrances of her relatives the invitations to the ceremony
+would have been engraved upon black-edged paper, like notices of a
+funeral."
+
+"Ah! And the second daughter,--hm--I mean the one expected here?"
+
+"She will not hear of marriage, and is studying for the stage."
+
+"Indeed?" said Baron Rohritz.
+
+The general moved a little nearer him, and, with a mischievous twinkle
+of his green eyes, whispered, "Between ourselves, I would not trust any
+girl under sixty--he-he-he!--in the matter of marriage. This Stella is
+hardly an exception; she probably imagines she can make a very good
+match from the stage--he-he!"
+
+Rohritz shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Stasy continued: "I really am sorry for Stella: under other
+circumstances she might have been very nice, but as it is she is
+dreadful. Two years ago she had a craze for horsemanship: she used to
+tear about for hours every day upon an English blood-horse which she
+had bought for a mere song because it was blind of one eye. Since
+the Meineck finances did not, of course, warrant a groom, and the
+Meineck arrogance could not accept the attendance of any one of the
+young men of the place,--and I know from the best authority that
+several kindly offered themselves as her escort,--she rode alone, and
+in a habit--good heavens!--patched up by herself out of an old blue
+cloth sofa-covering,--just fancy! One day the Baroness was more than
+commonly in need of money, perhaps to publish a new volume of history
+or to repair a tumble-down chimney,--who knows?--at all events the
+horse was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood. Stella cried for a
+week over her loss. Now the horse is quite blind, and draws an
+ash-cart; and when the little goose sees him she kisses his forehead."
+
+"Ah! _besoin d'aimer!_" chuckled the general. "Hm--hm!"
+
+"Three times a week she goes to Prague, of course without any
+chaperon,--and takes singing-lessons from a long-haired music-master
+who predicts for her a career like Alboni's. Heaven knows what will be
+the end of it. The Meineck temperament is sure sooner or later to show
+itself in the child. Her father's mode of life scandalized even his
+comrades, and her aunt----surely you know about Eugenie von Meineck,
+the captain's old flame----"
+
+She stopped short, for at this moment the captain himself entered the
+room, and, turning to Rohritz, said, "I'm glad, old fellow, that your
+stay in Erlach Court is to be brightened up a little."
+
+"I assure you that no change is needed to make my visit to you most
+agreeable," Rohritz rejoined, courteously.
+
+The captain bowed: "Nevertheless you cannot deny that your pleasure may
+be increased, and you are still young enough to enjoy the society of a
+pretty and clever girl."
+
+Rohritz bit his lip; he had a very decided, although quite excusable,
+dislike for what are called clever young women. Stasy turned up her
+nose.
+
+"Do you think the little Meineck clever--_mais vraiment_ clever,
+_spirituelle_?" she asked.
+
+"She is full of bright, merry ideas, and what a pretty girl says is apt
+to sound well," the captain replied, dryly.
+
+"Do you think her pretty?" Stasy drawled; she never could make up her
+mind to call any girl pretty.
+
+"Pretty? She is charming, bewitching!" the captain declared, in an
+angry crescendo.
+
+Just then his wife appeared, much provoked at some particularly
+shocking misdeed on the part of the maid to whom had been intrusted the
+arrangement of the guest-chambers, and she asked, "What is the matter?"
+
+"A difference of opinion with regard to your niece Stella, Katrine
+dear," Anastasia said, sweetly, leaning back with a languishing air
+among the cushions of her arm-chair and touching her fingertips
+together. "Your husband thinks her so very beautiful."
+
+"Oh, my husband always exaggerates," Frau von Leskjewitsch remarks.
+
+"I never said very beautiful; I did not even say beautiful: I simply
+said charming," the captain shouts.
+
+"She is pretty. There is something very attractive about her," his wife
+assents, "and my husband finds her especially charming because she
+looks like his old flame, Eugenie Meineck. For my part, this
+resemblance is the only thing about Stella that I do not like. I am
+sorry that even in her features alone she should remind one of her
+aunt."
+
+"A rather indelicate allusion on your part," growls the captain, whose
+brown cheeks had flushed at his wife's words.
+
+As his wife always declared, he had never got out of roundabouts, which
+suited him but ill, for he was an unusually tall, broad-shouldered man,
+with very handsome, clear-cut features, and a face tanned and worn by
+war, wind and weather, but recognizable as far as it could be seen as
+that of a southern Slav.
+
+"Extremely indelicate," he repeats, with emphasis.
+
+"I think it ridiculous never to outlive disappointments," says Frau von
+Leskjewitsch, who ever since she was a girl of eighteen had assumed the
+air of a matron of vast worldly experience,--"extremely ridiculous,"
+she adds, with comic mimicry of her husband's reproachful intonation.
+As she spoke she slightly threw back her head crowned with luxuriant
+hair gathered into a simple knot behind, half closed her eyes, and
+stuck one thumb in the buff leather belt that confined her dark-blue
+linen blouse at the waist. Baron Rohritz, an experienced connoisseur of
+the female sex, had stuck his eye-glass in his eye, and was gazing at
+her without a shadow of impertinent obtrusiveness, but with very
+evident interest. Without being handsome, or taking the slightest pains
+to appear so, she nevertheless produced a most agreeable impression.
+According to the Baron's computation, she was about thirty-four years
+old, and yet her tall slender figure had all the pliancy of early
+youth. Her every motion was characterized by a certain energy and
+determination that possessed an attraction in spite of being foreign to
+the generally received opinion as to what constitutes feminine grace.
+The eyes, shadowed by long black lashes, that looked forth from her
+pale, oval face were full of intelligence and constantly varying
+expression, her features were fine but not regular, and her laugh was
+charming.
+
+"Yes," she repeated, "I insist upon it, there is nothing more
+ridiculous than the inability to have done with one's disappointments.
+Good heavens! I freely confess to myself, and to the world at large,
+that the worthy man with whom I was wretchedly in love for four years
+was one of the vainest, most insignificant, most egotistical and
+uninteresting geese that ever lived."
+
+"You were not in love with him," declared the captain, who did not seem
+to be quite free from a certain retrospective jealousy. "You were
+simply under the domination of an _idee fixe_."
+
+"As if the passion of love were ever anything save an _idee fixe_ of
+the heart!" retorted Frau von Leskjewitsch; "and an _idee fixe_ is a
+disease; while it lasts it is well to be patient with it, but when it
+is over one ought to thank God and get rid of the traces of it as
+quickly as possible. That you never did, Jack: you were always like the
+belles of society, who cannot make up their minds to burn up their old
+ball-dresses and other trophies or simply to throw them away. They
+stuff their trunks full of such rubbish, until there is no room left
+for their honest every-day clothes. Throw it away, and the sooner the
+better!"
+
+"What has once been dear to me is forever sacred in my eyes," said the
+captain, solemnly.
+
+"Yes, and consequently you drag about with you through life such a heap
+of old, dusty, battered illusions that I really cannot see where you
+find the strength to hold fast to one healthy vital sensation. Bah!
+painful as it is, one must bury one's dead in time!"
+
+"I prefer to embalm mine," the captain rejoined, with dignity.
+
+"Let me congratulate you upon your collection of mummies," said his
+wife.
+
+"You have no capacity for veneration," the captain declared.
+
+"Because I disapprove of whining _ad infinitum_ as homage to a vanished
+enthusiasm,--ridiculous!" said Katrine.
+
+"Don't quarrel, my doves!" Stasy entreated, clasping her hands after a
+child-like fashion.
+
+"We have no idea of doing so," the mistress of the house replied,
+good-humouredly. "We never quarrel. Our complaint is a chronic
+difference of opinion. What were we really talking about?"
+
+"About illusions," remarked Baron Rohritz.
+
+"Oh, that was merely a side-issue,--only an after-piece," said Frau von
+Leskjewitsch, bethinking herself. "What was the starting-point of our
+discussion?--Oh, yes: we were speaking of my little niece."
+
+"Perhaps you can show us a photograph of her," said Anastasia.
+
+"Yes, yes." And Frau von Leskjewitsch began an eager search in a small
+gilt cottage which had once been a bonbonniere and now served as a
+receptacle for photographs. In vain. Upon a closer examination several
+of the photographs were found to be missing. Little Freddy confessed
+with a repentant face that he had cut them up to make winders for
+twine. His mother laughed, kissed his sleepy, troubled eyes, and sent
+him to bed. Thus Baron Rohritz was left to draw from fancy a possible
+likeness of Stella Meineck.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                             BARON ROHRITZ.
+
+
+Stasy had vented so much malice upon Stella that Rohritz had
+involuntarily begun to think well of her. After he had retired, in the
+watches of the night, and was trying in vain to be interested in a
+volume of Tauchnitz, his thoughts were still busied with her. "Poor
+thing," he reflected, "there must be something attractive about her, or
+Les and his wife would not be so devoted to her. And, after all, what
+did that venomous old maid's accusations amount to?--that she has an
+antipathy for artillery-officers,"--Rohritz as a former cavalry-man
+shrugged his shoulders indulgently at this weakness,--"and that she
+wants to go upon the stage. That, to be sure, is bad. I know nothing in
+the world more repulsive than girls of what are called the better
+classes who are studying for the stage."
+
+And Rohritz recalled a certain officer's daughter whom he had once met
+at an evening entertainment, and who in proof of her distinguished
+talent had declaimed various 'selections.' He had been quite unable to
+detect her talent, and had spoken of her contemptuously as an
+hysterical tree-frog. The appellation had met with acceptance and had
+been frequently repeated.
+
+The remembrance of the officer's bony daughter lay heavy on his soul.
+"Yes, if Stella should remind me in the least of that hysterical
+tree-frog, I really could not stay here much longer," he thought, with
+a shudder. "And in any case I cannot but regret these last pleasant
+days. That old dandy and the faded beauty were bad enough, but they
+could be ignored; while a young girl--and a relative, too, of the
+family---- Pshaw! at all events I can take my leave."
+
+With which he put out his candle and went to bed.
+
+What it was that was dear to him in the sleepy and very uninteresting
+life at Erlach Court it would be difficult to say. Perhaps he prized it
+as chiming in so admirably with the precious ennui which he had brought
+home from America ten years previously, and which had since been his
+inseparable companion. It was such a finished, elegant ennui; it never
+yawned and looked about for amusement, never in fact felt the least
+desire for it, but looked down in self-satisfied superiority upon those
+childish mortals who were actually capable of being irritated or
+entertained upon this old exhausted globe.
+
+He was proud of this kind of moral ossification, which was gradually
+paralyzing all his really noble qualities.
+
+"'Tis a pity!" said Leskjewitsch, whose youth was still warm in his
+veins, and who declared that he had never been bored for half an hour
+in his life, except upon a pitch-dark night in winter at some lonely
+outpost when he had been delayed on the march; and although the honest
+captain was a demi-savage and "still in roundabouts," we cannot help
+repeating his words with reference to Rohritz, "'Tis a pity!"
+
+Yes, a pity! Who that saw Edgar von Rohritz--his mother had bestowed
+upon him his melodramatic name in a fit of enthusiasm for Walter Scott
+and Donizetti,--who that saw him to-day could believe that in his
+youth, under a thin disguise of aristocratic nonchalance, he was far
+more sentimentally inclined than his former comrade Leskjewitsch? But
+sentiment had fared ill with him. After having overcome, not without a
+hard struggle, the pain of a very bitter disappointment, his demands
+upon existence were of the most moderate description, and this partly
+to spare himself useless pain and partly from caution lest he should
+make himself ridiculous. He kept his heart closely shut; and if at
+times sentiment, now fallen into disgrace with him, softly appealed to
+it, entreating admission, he refused to listen. He was no longer at
+home for sentiment.
+
+About twenty years since he had begun his military career in the
+same regiment of dragoons with Jack Leskjewitsch, and when hardly
+five-and-twenty he had left the service and travelled round the world,
+perhaps because change of air is as beneficial for diseases of the
+heart as for other maladies.
+
+For years now he had made his home in Graetz, whence he took frequent
+flights to Vienna. He was but moderately addicted to society, so
+called. He never danced; at balls he played whist, and dryly criticised
+the figures and the toilettes of the dancers. He had the reputation of
+being a woman-hater, and accordingly all the young married women
+thought him excessively interesting. He was held to be one of the best
+matches in Graetz, wherefore he was exposed to persecution by all
+mothers blest with marriageable daughters.
+
+Wearied of this varied homage, he had gradually withdrawn from society,
+and had even relinquished his game of Boston, when one day a report was
+circulated that he had suddenly lost almost all his property through
+the negligence of an agent. All that was left him--so it was said--was
+a mere pittance. Since he never contradicted this report, it was
+thought to be confirmed. The mothers of marriageable daughters
+discovered that he had a disagreeable disposition, and that it would be
+very difficult to live with him. One week after this sad report had
+been in circulation, he observed with a peculiar smile that during this
+space of time he had received at least half a dozen fewer invitations
+to dinners and balls than usual. Shortly afterwards meeting a friend in
+the street who offered him his sincere condolence, he replied, with a
+twirl of his moustache,--
+
+"Do not, trouble yourself about me: I assure you that it is sometimes
+very comfortable to be poor!"
+
+The news of his sadly-altered circumstances penetrated even to the
+secluded Erlach Court, and Captain Leskjewitsch, who learned it from a
+casual mention of it in a postscript to a letter from a comrade, was
+exceedingly agitated by it. He ran to his wife with the open letter in
+his hand, exclaiming, "Ah ca, Katrine, read that. Rohritz has lost
+every penny! Under such circumstances he must need entire change of
+scene for a time. We must invite him here immediately,--immediately,
+that is, if you have no objection."
+
+For a wonder, the quarrelsome couple were perfectly at one on this
+point.
+
+"I shall be delighted to see him," replied Katrine. "Invite him at
+once; that is, if you are not afraid of his making love to me."
+
+The captain's face took on an odd expression. "There is no danger of
+your allowing a stranger to make love to you," he muttered. "Your
+disagreeable characteristic is that you will not allow even me to make
+love to you."
+
+Katrine raised her eyebrows: "I have an aversion for _rechauffees_."
+
+The captain took instant advantage of his opportunity: "You certainly
+cannot expect to be the first woman who I--hm!--thought had fine eyes?"
+
+But Katrine was very busy with her household accounts, and consequently
+she had no time at present to indulge in her favourite amusement, a
+lively discussion.
+
+"Don't agitate yourself, my dear," she rejoined, "but go and write a
+beautiful letter to Rohritz; and do it quickly, that it may go by
+to-day's post. Shall I compose it for you?"
+
+"Thanks, I think I am equal to that myself," the captain replied, with
+a laugh. "Upon my word, a poor dragoon has to put up with a deal from
+so cultivated a woman."
+
+As he turned to go, Katrine called after him: "I warn you beforehand
+that I have a weakness for Rohritz. All the rest is your affair. I wash
+my hands of it."
+
+Nothing so aroused Katrine Leskjewitsch's sarcasm as the problematical
+conscientiousness of those young wives who combine a decided love for
+flirtation with a determination to cast all the blame for it upon their
+husbands, posing in the eyes of the world as suffering angels at the
+side of black-hearted monsters. Her ridicule of such women was sharp
+and plentiful.
+
+"A deuce of a woman!" the captain murmured as he betook himself to his
+library and--rare effort for a dragoon--indited a letter four pages
+long to his old comrade.
+
+His friend's epistle, strange to say, touched Rohritz. It was so
+cordial, so frank, and so warmly sympathetic, such a contrast to the
+formal assurances of sympathy which he met with elsewhere, that he
+accepted the invitation extended to him, and made his appearance at
+Erlach Court a week afterwards.
+
+He had been here now for three weeks, and had been really content,
+especially during the early period of his visit, when he had been alone
+with his host and hostess. The arrival of the general and Stasy had
+somewhat annoyed him, and the news of the approach of another
+detachment of guests consisting, moreover, of a mother and daughter
+positively irritated him. Good heavens! another mother, another
+daughter! Was there then no spot upon the face of the globe where one
+could be safe from mothers and daughters?
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+                              THE ARRIVAL.
+
+
+A telegram had finally announced the arrival of the Meinecks by the
+10.30 morning train at H----, the nearest railroad-station, tolerably
+distant from Erlach Court.
+
+It is almost noon; the captain and Freddy have driven over to the
+station to meet the guests, and the rest of the family are on the
+terrace outside of the dining-room. The hostess, dressed as usual with
+puritanic simplicity in some kind of dark linen stuff, deliciously
+fresh and smelling of lavender, is leaning back in a garden-chair,
+diligently crochetting a red-and-white afghan for her little son's bed.
+The general, in a very youthful felt hat adorned with a feather, is
+chuckling in a corner over a novel of Zola's. Anastasia is fluttering
+gracefully hither and thither, fancying the while that she looks like a
+Watteau. In pursuance of her lamentable custom of wearing her shabby
+old evening-gowns in the country in the daytime, she has donned a
+much-worn sky-blue silk with dilapidated tulle trimming, and is
+surprised that her faded splendour appears to fail to dazzle those
+present.
+
+"Life is pleasant here, is it not?" asks Katrine, looking up from her
+crochetting at Rohritz, who faces her as he leans against the
+balustrade of the terrace. "I am trying my best to induce my husband to
+leave the service and retire to this place. He is still hesitating."
+
+"Hm! Do you not think that for a man of his temperament existence at
+Erlach Court would be a trifle monotonous?" is Rohritz's reply.
+
+"He can occupy himself," Katrine makes answer, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"If I mistake not, you have rented the farm at Erlach Court?"
+
+"Yes, thank heaven!" Frau von Leskjewitsch admits, with a smile.
+"Farming is usually a very costly taste for dilettanti. But he has
+entire control over the forests and the vineyards; they would give him
+plenty to do; and then he is an enthusiastic horseman, and the roads
+are very fine."
+
+Rohritz is silent, and thoughtfully knocks off the ashes from his cigar
+with the long nail of his little finger. He cannot help thinking that
+Katrine Leskjewitsch, exemplary as she may be as a mother, has her
+faults as a wife. Jack Leskjewitsch is not yet eight-and-thirty, and
+she is prescribing for him a life suited to a man of sixty.
+
+"It is certainly a pity to cut short his career," Rohritz remarks,
+after a while, "especially since he passed so brilliant an examination
+for advanced rank last year."
+
+"Yes, his talent is indubitable," Katrine assents: "one would hardly
+think it of him. He devotes but little attention to study, as I can
+testify, and I certainly did not coach him, as did the wife of an
+unfortunate captain who passed the same examination." The corners of
+Katrine's mouth twitched. "What do you think was the end of the united
+efforts of husband and wife? Two weeks after barely and laboriously
+passing his examination the worthy man was a maniac. In fact, no fewer
+than seven of my husband's fellow-students in that course lost their
+reason. 'Tis odd how much ambitious incapacity one encounters in this
+world! Jack does not belong in that category, however. He adores the
+service, but he has not a particle of ambition."
+
+All this is uttered with a seemingly woful lack of interest.
+
+"'Tis a pity that she does not sympathize more fully with Les," Rohritz
+thinks to himself; but all he says is, "And yet you would have him
+relinquish his career?"
+
+"A cavalry-man who looks forward to a career ought not to marry,"
+Katrine maintains. "Probably you can recall the delights of a military,
+nomadic existence for a family, particularly in those holes in Hungary.
+Such hovels!--a stagnant swamp in front, a Suabian regiment installed
+in the rooms, and no sooner have you got things into a civilized
+condition than you have to break up to the sound of boot and saddle. In
+one year I changed my abode three times. I could have borne it all so
+far as I was concerned, but there was the child. Freddy became subject
+to attacks of fever, so I bundled him up and brought him here. He
+recovered immediately, and I wrote to my husband that he must choose
+between his family and the army."
+
+"That was to the point, at least," said Rohritz.
+
+"Yes. He was apparently offended, and did not answer my letter for a
+month. Then he was seized with a longing for--for the child. He
+alighted in the midst of our solitude like a bomb at Sevastopol. Of
+course we were charmed to see him, and he was so delighted with Erlach
+Court that he was quite ready to turn his back on the service. I,
+however, do not approve of hasty decisions, and so I advised him to
+postpone his change of vocations----"
+
+"His resignation of a vocation," Baron Rohritz interpolated.
+
+"What a hair-splitting humour you are in today!" Katrine rejoined, with
+a shrug, "to postpone for a while his resignation, if that pleases you.
+So he obtained leave of absence for a year. Hm!--I am afraid he is
+beginning to be bored. I cannot understand it. You must admit that we
+are charmingly situated here."
+
+"Indeed you are."
+
+"The estate is in good order," Katrine went on, "and we have no
+neighbours."
+
+"A great advantage."
+
+"So it seems to me. One of the most disagreeable sides of an army life
+was always, in my opinion, the being forced into association with so
+many unpleasant people. Most of my husband's comrades were very
+agreeable, unusually kindly, pleasant men, but to be forced to accept
+them all, and their wives into the bargain without liberty to show any
+preference,--it was simply odious. I am a fanatic for solitude; the
+usual human being I dislike; but you cannot throw everybody over,
+however you may desire to do so,"--with a glance over her shoulder
+towards Stasy and the general. "I beg you will make no application to
+yourself of my remark."
+
+"Much obliged." Rohritz bowed. "I confess I began----"
+
+"No need of fine phrases," Katrine interrupted him. "You know I like
+you. And in proof of it--you may have heard that we want to pass the
+winter here; it will be delightful! entirely lonely,--shut off from
+civilization by a wall of snow,--Christmas in the country,--the
+children from three villages to provide with gifts,--the castle quite
+empty, except for our three selves and Freddy! Well, in proof of my
+genuine friendship I invite you to share with us this charming
+solitude. Will you come? Say you will." Dropping her work in her lap,
+she offers him both her hands.
+
+"A curious creature! She treats me like an aged man, and moreover
+considers herself sufficiently elderly to dispense with caution in her
+intercourse with the other sex. An odd illusion for a woman still
+extremely pretty," Rohritz thinks; and, occupied with these
+reflections, he does not immediately reply.
+
+"You decline?" she asks, merrily. "I shall not throw away such an
+invitation upon you a second time."
+
+"They are coming! they are coming!" Stasy exclaims, clapping her hands
+childishly and tripping to and fro in much excitement.
+
+"I do not hear the carriage," Katrine rejoins, looking at her watch.
+"Besides, it is not time for them yet."
+
+"But I hear something in the avenue---- Ah, please come, dear Edgar,"
+Stasy entreats.
+
+Rohritz does not stir.
+
+"Baron Rohritz!" in an imploring tone.
+
+"What can I do for you, Fraeulein Stasy?"
+
+"Your opera-glass--be quick!" And, while Rohritz reluctantly rises to
+go for the desired optical aid, Stasy lisps, "Not at all over-polite;
+quite like a brother: just what I enjoy."
+
+"It is they," Katrine exclaims. "The carriage is just turning into the
+avenue. Let me have it for a moment,"--taking from his hand the glass
+which Rohritz has just brought. "Yes, now I see them quite distinctly."
+
+A few minutes later the rattle of approaching wheels is heard. The two
+ladies and the general hasten down to receive the guests. Rohritz
+discreetly withdraws to his apartment, and from behind his half-drawn
+curtains watches the arrival. The carriage stops, the captain springs
+out to aid two ladies to alight. At first Rohritz hears nothing but a
+hubbub of glad voices, sees nothing but a confused group, the general
+standing on one side with a polite grin on his face, and Freddy giving
+vent to his joyous excitement by performing a war-dance around the
+party.
+
+When the situation at last becomes clear, he perceives a very handsome
+old lady in a close black travelling-hat, a pair of blue spectacles
+shielding her eyes from the dust, and wearing a dust-cloak which may
+once have been black, while beside her--he adjusts his eye-glass in his
+eye--assuredly Stella does not remind him of the 'hysterical tree-frog'
+of frightful memory, but of some one else, for the life of him he
+cannot remember whom. He looks and looks, sees two serious dark eyes in
+a gentle childlike face beneath the broad brim of a Kate-Greenaway hat,
+a half-wayward, half-shy smile, charming dimples appearing by turns in
+the cheeks and at the corners of the mouth, a delicately-chiselled
+nose, a very short and rather haughty upper lip, beneath which gleam
+rows of pearly teeth, and for the rest, the figure of a sylph, rather
+tall, still a little too thin, and with a foot peeping from beneath her
+skirt that Taglioni might covet.
+
+He looks and looks. No, Stella certainly does not remind him of the
+'hysterical tree-frog,' but as certainly she recalls to his mind
+something, some one--who is it? who can it be?
+
+An unpleasant surmise occurs to him, but before it can take actual
+shape in his brain the impetuous entrance of the captain has banished
+it.
+
+"Come to the drawing-room, Rohritz, and be presented to the ladies," he
+calls out. "By the way, what means this wretched idea of which Stasy
+informs me? She says that you are going back to Graetz immediately."
+
+"The fact is, my lawyer has summoned me," Rohritz replies; "but--hm!--I
+fancy the matter can be settled by letter. At any rate, I will try to
+have it so disposed of."
+
+"Bravo!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                                 STELLA.
+
+
+Freddy has been terribly disappointed; instead of the bonbonniere, the
+snap-pistol, or the storybook, among which three articles he has
+allowed his expectant imagination to rove, his aunt has brought him
+Sanders's German Dictionary.
+
+"I hope you will like it," Stella remarks, with emphasis, depositing
+the voluminous gift upon the school-room table. "We had to pay for at
+least five pounds of extra weight of luggage in the monster's behalf,
+and moreover it has crushed flat my only new summer hat. 'Tis a great
+pity."
+
+Freddy, who, although hitherto rather puny and delicate in body, is
+mentally, thanks to clever qualities inherited from both his parents,
+far in advance of his age, and already thinks Voss's translation of the
+Odyssey entertaining, turns over the leaves of the three volumes of the
+Dictionary without finding them attractive.
+
+"I put in a good word for the child," Stella says, with a laugh,
+to the captain, who with his friend Rohritz happens to be in Freddy's
+school-room, "but mamma insists that it is of no consequence; if it
+does not please him now, it will be very useful to him in future. Never
+mind, my darling," she adds, turning to her little cousin, who, with a
+sigh and not without much physical effort, is putting the colossal
+Sanders on his bookshelves; "it certainly presents an imposing
+spectacle, and I have a foolish thing for your birthday, the very
+finest my limited means could afford." As she speaks she strokes the
+little fellow's brown curls affectionately.
+
+"Stella, Stella, where are you loitering?" a deep voice calls at this
+moment, and the girl replies,--
+
+"In a moment, mamma, I am coming!--I have to write a letter to a Berlin
+publisher," she says by way of explanation to the two men, as she
+leaves the room.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The evening has come. Dinner is over. All are sitting in more or less
+comfortable garden-chairs on the terrace before the castle, beneath the
+spreading boughs of a linden, now laden with fragrant blossoms.
+
+The stars are not yet awake, but the moon has risen full, though giving
+but little light, and looking in its reddish lustre like a candle
+lighted by day; the heavens are of a pale, greenish blue, with
+opalescent gleams on the horizon. The sun has set, twilight has mingled
+lights and shadows, the colours of the flowers are dull and faded.
+Around the castle reigns a sweet, peaceful silence, that most precious
+of all the luxuries of a residence in the country. The evening wind
+murmurs a dreamy duo with the ripple of the stream running at the foot
+of the garden, and now and then is heard the heavy foot-fall of a
+peasant returning from his work to the village.
+
+Baroness Meineck is holding forth to her hostess, who listens
+patiently, or at least silently, upon the subject of the
+cholera-bacilli and the latest discoveries of Pasteur. To Rohritz, who,
+will he nill he, has had to place his hands at the disposal of the arch
+Stasy as a reel for her crewel, the Baroness's voice partly recalls a
+sentinel and partly a tragic actress; she always talks in fine rounded
+periods, as if she suspected a stenographer concealed near. While the
+quondam beauty, with a thousand superfluous little arts, winds an
+endless length of red worsted upon a folded playing-card, he glances
+towards the spot where Stella is telling stories to Freddy, and
+involuntarily listens.
+
+Since the Baroness, perhaps because she has reached some rather
+delicate details in her medical treatise, sees fit to lower slightly
+her powerful voice, he can hear almost every word spoken by Stella. If
+he is especially susceptible in any regard, it is in that of a
+beautiful mode of speech. What Stella says he is quite indifferent to,
+but the delightful tone of her soft, clear, bird-like voice touches his
+soul with an indescribably soothing charm.
+
+"Now that's enough. I do not know any more stories," he hears her say
+at last in reply to an entreaty from her little cousin for "just one
+more."
+
+"No more at all?" Freddy asks, in dismay, and with all the earnestness
+of his age.
+
+"No more to-day," Stella says, consolingly. "I shall know another
+to-morrow." She kisses him on the forehead. "You look tired, my
+darling! Is it your bedtime?"
+
+"No," the captain answers for him, "but he could not sleep last night
+for delight in the coming of our guests, and he is paying for it now.
+Shall I carry you up-stairs--hey, Freddy?"
+
+But Freddy considers it quite beneath his dignity to go to bed with the
+chickens, and prefers to clamber upon his father's knee.
+
+"You are growing too big a fellow for this," the captain says, rather
+reprovingly: nevertheless he puts his arm tenderly about the boy,
+saying to Stella, by way of excuse, "We spoil him terribly: he was not
+very strong in the spring, and he still enjoys all the privileges of a
+convalescent,--hey, my boy?" By way of reply the little fellow nestles
+close to his father with some indistinct words expressive of great
+content, and while the captain's moustache is pressed upon the child's
+soft hair, Stella takes a small scarlet wrap from her shoulders and
+folds it about his bare legs.
+
+"'Tis good to sleep so, Freddy, is it not? Ah, where are the times gone
+when I could climb up on my father's knees and fall asleep on his
+shoulder?--they were the happiest hours of my life!" the girl says,
+with a sigh.
+
+"But, Baron Rohritz, pray hold your hands a little quieter," the
+wool-winding Stasy calls out to her victim. "You twitch them all the
+time."
+
+"If you only knew how glad I am to see you all again, and to spend a
+few days in the country," Stella begins afresh after a while.
+
+"Why, do you not come directly from the country?" the captain asks,
+surprised.
+
+"From the country?--we come from Zalow," Stella replies: "the
+difference is heaven-wide. Yes, when mamma thirty years ago bought
+the mill where we live now,--without the miller and his wife, 'tis
+true,--because it was so picturesque, it really was in the country, or
+at least in a village, where besides ourselves there were only a few
+peasants, and one other person, a misanthropic widow who lived at the
+very end of the hamlet in a one-story house concealed behind a screen
+of chestnut-trees. I have no objection to peasant huts, particularly
+when their thatched roofs are overgrown with green moss, and
+misanthropic widows are seldom in one's way. But ten years ago a
+railway was built directly through Zalow, and villas shot up out of the
+ground in every direction like mushrooms. And such villas, and such
+proprietors! All _nouveaux riches_ and pushing tradesfolk from Prague.
+A stocking-weaver built two villas close beside us,--one for his own
+family, and the other to rent; he christened the pair Girofle-Girofla,
+and declares that the name alone is worth ten thousand guilders. He
+also maintains that the architecture of his villas is the purest
+classic: each has a Greek peristyle and a square belvedere. It would be
+deliciously ridiculous if one were not forced to have the monsters
+directly before one's eyes all the time. The worst of it is that one
+really gets used to them! Dear papa's former tailor has built himself a
+hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First directly on the road,
+behind a gilded iron fence and without a tree near it for fear of
+obscuring its splendour. Like all retired tradesfolk, the tailor is
+sentimental. Only lately he complained to me of the difficulty
+experienced by cultivated people in finding a fitting social circle."
+
+"Do you know him personally, then?" the captain asks, with an air of
+annoyance.
+
+"Oh, yes, we know every one to bow to," says Stella. "In a little
+while we shall exchange calls: I am looking forward to that with great
+pleasure."
+
+"What do you think of such talk, Baron?" Stasy asks under her breath.
+
+Baron Rohritz makes no reply: perhaps such talk is to his taste.
+
+Meanwhile, Stella goes on in the same satirical tone: "As soon as some
+one of these aesthetic proprietors has come to a decision as to where
+the piano is to stand, we shall certainly be invited to admire the new
+furniture. Then mamma will look up from her books and say, 'I have no
+time; but if you want to go, pray do as you please.' Mamma never cares
+what I do or where I go." Stella's soft voice trembles; she shakes her
+head, passes her hand over her eyes, and runs on: "Even the walks are
+spoiled; one is never sure of not encountering a picnic-party. They are
+always singing by turns 'Dear to my heart, thou forest fair,' and
+'Gaudeamus,' and when they leave it the 'forest fair' is always
+littered with cold victuals, greasy brown paper, and tin cans. It is
+horrible! I detest that railway. It snatched from us the prettiest part
+of our garden; there is scarcely room enough left for 'pussy wants a
+corner,' and now mamma has rented half of it and the ground-floor of
+the mill to a family from Prague for a summer residence."
+
+"I do not understand Lina," the captain says, with irritation. "You
+surely are not reduced to the necessity of renting part of your small
+house for lodgings."
+
+"Mamma wanted just two hundred guilders to buy Littre's
+Dictionary,--the fine complete edition. Moreover, I think you are under
+a mistake with regard to our resources. I detest the railway, but if it
+had not bought of us, two years ago, a piece of land on which to build
+a shop, I hardly know what we should be living upon now. Ah, if poor
+papa could see how we live! He could not imagine a household without a
+butler or a lady's-maid. Mamma dismissed the butler at first upon
+strictly moral grounds----"
+
+Anastasia von Gurlichingen casts down her eyes. "Did you ever hear
+anything like that, Baron Rohritz," she asks, "from a young girl?"
+
+Rohritz shrugs his shoulders impatiently, and Stella goes on quite at
+her ease:
+
+"He was always making love to the cook, and the lady's-maid was jealous
+and complained of it. Then the lady's-maid was dismissed, for pecuniary
+reasons; then the cook, for sanitary considerations: one fine day she
+nearly poisoned us all with verdigris, her copper kettles were so badly
+scoured. Her place was never filled, for in the interim, that is, while
+we were looking for a new _cordon bleu_, mamma discovered that a cook
+was a very costly article and that we could get along without one. Our
+last maid-of-all work was a dwarf not quite four feet tall, who had to
+mount on a stool to set the table. Mamma engaged her because she
+thought that her ugliness would put a stop to love-making----" Stella
+breaks the thread of her discourse to laugh gently; her laugh is like
+the ripple of a brook. "But real talent defies all obstacles. Mamma's
+experiment made her richer by one sad experience: she knows now that
+not even a large hump can make its possessor impervious to Cupid's
+arrows."
+
+The captain laughs. Stasy's disapprobation has reached its climax; she
+twitches impatiently at the worsted she is winding from Rohritz's
+hands.
+
+"What would papa say if he could see it all?" Stella says, in a changed
+voice.
+
+"Do you still grieve so for your poor father, mouse?" the captain asks,
+kindly, perceiving that the girl with difficulty restrains her tears at
+the mention of her dead father.
+
+"You would not ask that, uncle, if you knew what a life I lead," she
+replies, in a choked voice. "Yes, it is amusing enough to tell of, but
+to live---- There is no use in thinking of it!" She bends slightly
+above her little cousin, whose head is resting quietly upon his
+father's shoulder. "He is sound asleep," she whispers, brushing away a
+fluttering night-moth from Freddy's pretty face,--"poor little man!"
+
+"It is growing cool," Katrine declares, glancing anxiously towards
+Freddy in the midst of the Baroness's interesting discourse upon the
+latest achievements of medical science, and then, rising, she leaves
+her sister-in-law to go to her little son, saying, "Give me the boy,
+Jack. I will carry him up-stairs."
+
+"What! drag up-stairs with this heavy boy? Nonsense!" says the captain.
+
+Whereupon Freddy wakes, rubs his eyes, is a little cross at first,
+after the fashion of sleepy children, but finally says good-night to
+all and goes off, his little hand clasped in his mother's.
+
+"Here is some one else asleep too!" says Katrine, as she passes the
+general, who is sitting with his arms crossed and his head sunk on his
+breast.
+
+"Can you tell me, Jack, whether mummies ever have the rheumatism?" she
+asks. "Indeed, you had better waken him. I will have the whist-table
+set out.--And you, sweetheart," she says to Stella, "might unpack your
+music and sing us something."
+
+While Stella amiably rises to go with her aunt, and the Baroness makes
+ready to follow them, murmuring that she must unpack the music herself,
+or her manuscripts will be all disarranged, Stasy turns to Rohritz:
+
+"What do you say to it all? Did you ever hear such talk from a
+well-born girl? Such a conversation! Some allowance, to be sure, must
+be made for her."
+
+But Rohritz simply murmurs, "Poor girl!"
+
+"Yes, she is greatly to be pitied; her training has been deplorable!"
+sighs Stasy, and then, lowering her voice a little, she adds, "The
+colonel----"
+
+"What Meineck was he?" Rohritz interrupts her, impatiently. "There are
+four or five in the army,--sons of a field-marshal, if I am not
+mistaken. Was he in the dragoons or the Uhlans?"
+
+"Franz Meineck, of the ---- Hussars," says Jack.
+
+"The one, then, who distinguished himself at Solferino and got the
+Theresa cross?" Rohritz asks.
+
+"The same," replies the captain.
+
+"I do not know why I imagined that it must have been Heinrich Meineck.
+It was Franz, then." He adds, with some hesitation, "I did not know him
+personally, but I have heard a great deal of him. He must have been a
+charming officer and a delightful comrade, besides being one of the
+bravest men in the army----"
+
+"He was particularly distinguished as a husband," Stasy exclaims, with
+her usual frank malice.
+
+"We will not speak of that, Fraeulein Stasy," says the captain. "My
+sister's marriage was certainly an insane, overwrought affair, and
+Franz gave his wife abundant cause for leaving him; but of the two
+lives his was the ruined one."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+                             AN EXPERIMENT.
+
+
+Yes, of the two lives the colonel's was the ruined one; wherefore, in
+spite of all the evident and great fault on his side, the sympathies of
+every one were in his favour,--that is, of all his fellows who knew
+life and the world, and who were ready to give their regard and their
+sympathy to men as they are, instead of, like certain great
+philosophers, reserving their entire store of commiseration for those
+exquisitely correct creatures, men as they should be.
+
+When they made each other's acquaintance in Lemberg at Lina's father's,
+General Leskjewitsch's, Franz Meineck was twenty-six and Lina
+Leskjewitsch thirty-two years old. Nevertheless the world--the world
+that was familiar with these two people--wondered far more at her fancy
+for him than at his falling a prey to her fascinations.
+
+She had from her earliest years been an exceptionally interesting girl,
+and a position as such had always been accorded her without any effort
+on her part to obtain it, for in spite of all her whims and
+eccentricities no one could detect in her a spark of affectation or
+pretension. She was altogether too indifferent to what people said of
+her ever to pose for the applause of the crowd. Her egotism, fed as it
+was by the homage of those around her, led her to yield to the
+prompting of every caprice, and since she was very beautiful, and could
+be excessively fascinating when she chose,--since, moreover, her father
+held a distinguished office under government,--she was dubbed original
+and a genius where other girls would have been condemned as eccentric
+and unmaidenly.
+
+Always keenly alive to intellectual interests, she was, by the time she
+had reached her twenty-fifth year, a confirmed blue-stocking; she
+studied Sanskrit, and was in correspondence with half the scientific
+men in Europe. Moreover, she was by no means 'sicklied o'er with the
+pale cast of thought,' but full of wit and spirit. She swam like a
+fish, venturing alone far out upon river or lake, and rode with the
+boldness of a trained equestrian, without even a groom as escort. She
+had always disdained to dance; at the only ball she had ever been
+induced to attend she had been merely an on-looker. She could not
+comprehend how there could be any pleasure in dancing, she remarked,
+with a contemptuous glance towards the whirling couples: it was either
+ridiculous, or childish, or else positively disgusting.
+
+Her contempt for love-making was as pronounced as for dancing. The
+homage of the young exquisites of society bored her inexpressibly; it
+was absolutely odious to her. She often boasted that in her life she
+had had but three loves,--Buonaparte, Lord Byron, and Machiavelli.
+
+All her acquaintance, more especially the feminine portion of it, were
+astounded when a report was suddenly circulated that she was smitten
+with Franz Meineck, a simple, fair-haired hussar, with nothing to
+recommend him save his handsome face and his fine chivalric bearing.
+
+It was easy to see what attracted him in her,--her rich brunette
+beauty, and, in strange contrast with it, the cold, defiant bluntness
+of her air and manner, the nimbus of originality that surrounded her,
+the fact that towards all other men her indifference was well-nigh
+discourtesy, while to him she was amiability itself. But what she, she
+of all girls in the world, could find to attract her in him,--this was
+what puzzled the brains of all the wiseacres in Lemberg.
+
+But that he pleased her no one could deny, least of all she herself.
+Once, after a dinner at which Meineck had been her neighbour, a very
+cultivated and interesting friend asked her how she could possibly find
+any entertainment in that superficial hussar. She replied, with a
+shrug, that she found it much more amusing to hear a superficial hussar
+talk than to see a distinguished philosopher masticate his food, which
+according to her experience was the only entertainment afforded by
+great scientific lights at a dinner.
+
+While, however, Meineck's love for her was, from the very beginning,
+of an enthusiastic, passionate nature, the inclination she felt for him
+was at first very gentle in character.
+
+For her he was but a child; the idea that her relations with him could
+end in marriage would have seemed more mad and improbable to her than
+to any one else. Her demeanour towards him was always friendly; she
+would rally him good-humouredly, and anon treat him with a kindliness
+that was almost maternal. There was nothing in her manner to suggest
+her being in love with him.
+
+Towards the end of February, when some treacherously mild weather
+heralded, as all prophesied, a cold windy March, Lina allowed her
+youthful adorer to be her escort in long rides on horseback. Here he
+was in his element, and greatly her superior in spite of her Amazonian
+skill. It was after one of these expeditions, when she reached home
+with eyes sparkling and cheeks slightly flushed, that she suddenly had
+an attack of terror. She knew that, accustomed as she had been for so
+long to absolute freedom, she must sooner or later find any fetters
+galling; she did not wish to marry.
+
+The next day, without informing any one save her nearest of kin of her
+intention, she left Lemberg and retired to a small estate near Prague,
+where after her independent fashion she was often wont to stay for
+months alone with an old gardener and her maid.
+
+It was a pretty, romantic spot, formerly a mill. A venerable
+weeping-willow stood beside it, its branches trailing above the
+antiquated mansard roof; a little brook rippled past it, gurgling and
+sobbing between banks of forget-me-nots and jonquils on its way to
+the larger stream. In this particular March, however, jonquils and
+forget-me-nots were still sleeping soundly beneath the snow, and the
+brook was silent. The February prophets were right: March was terribly
+cold. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the mill, almost reaching its
+windows, and the weeping-willow was clad in a fairy-like robe of
+glistening snow.
+
+Lina sat from morning until evening like a kind of feminine Doctor
+Faust among bookcases, retorts, and globes in a spacious, dreary room,
+trying to work and longing 'to recover herself.' Then one day Meineck
+made his appearance at the mill. She received him with a great show of
+gay indifference, sitting at her writing-table and playing with her pen
+by way of intimating that any prolongation of his visit was
+undesirable. He perceived this. Embarrassed, confused by the sight of
+the scientific apparatus that surrounded him on all sides, he sat
+leaning forward, his sabre between his knees, in an arm-chair from
+which he had been obliged to remove a Greek lexicon and two volumes of
+the 'Revue,' and stammering all sorts of childish nonsense while he
+gazed at her with adoring eyes. She wore a perfectly plain gown of
+dark-green cloth fitting her like a riding-habit, and her hair, which
+curled naturally, was combed back behind her ears and cut short. He
+found this mode of dressing her hair charming, and his heart throbbed
+fast as he noted the magnificent fall of her shoulders. In his eyes she
+was incomparably beautiful; hers was the majestic loveliness of the
+unattainable. He often saw her thus afterwards in his dreams, and in
+his death-agony her image hovered before him again, noble, undefaced,
+as it was impressed upon his heart at this interview.
+
+Later on he wondered how he found courage to speak, but he found it. He
+sued for her hand, he wooed her passionately with words that could not
+but move her. She refused him. He would not accept her refusal. She
+stood her ground bravely, frankly confessing to him that it cost her an
+effort to repulse him, but that she must do it to insure the peace of
+mind of both. Apart from her dislike of resigning the freedom of her
+existence, she thought it unprincipled to give heed to the pleading of
+a poor exaggerated lad who was led away in a moment of romantic
+enthusiasm to offer his hand to a woman so much his elder.
+
+There were such full, warm, cordial tones in her deep voice! Sight and
+hearing failed him. He knelt before her, kissed the hem of her garment,
+and promised at last to be content for the present if she would allow
+him to speak again at the end of six months. By that time it would be
+manifest that his love was not merely momentary romantic enthusiasm.
+
+She laid her beautiful slender hands upon his shoulders, and said,
+kindly, "Dear lad, if after six months you are still so insane as to
+covet an elderly bride, we will discuss the matter again. And now
+adieu!"
+
+He pressed his lips upon her hand so passionately that she suddenly
+withdrew it, and the colour mounted to her cheeks; he had never seen
+them flush so before. His eyes fathomed the depths of her own: she
+turned her head away.
+
+"_Au revoir!_" he said, and withdrew, bowing gravely and profoundly.
+
+There was something of triumph in the rhythm of his retreating
+footsteps; at least so it seemed to her as she listened to the sound as
+it died away in the distance. He walked as though his feet were shod
+with victory. Indignation possessed her. Her strong nature defended
+itself vigorously against the influence of this beguiling insidious
+force which had taken captive her heart and threatened to subdue her
+reason. In vain! The hand which his lips had pressed burned, and
+suddenly there glided through her veins, dreamily, lullingly, a
+something inexpressibly sweet, something she had never experienced
+before,--a delicious yet paralyzing sense of weariness. She started,
+and sat upright; then, gathering together the papers on her
+writing-table, she tried to work. In vain! The pen dropped from her
+fingers. She rose hastily and went to take a long walk. Her feet sank
+deep in the melting snow; the air was warm, and the south wind rustled
+among the trees and shrubbery, whispering mysteriously along the
+crackling surface of the frozen brook. Her weariness increased; she
+had to retrace her steps.
+
+She went to bed earlier than usual that evening, and tried to think of
+grave subjects; but sweet, long-forgotten melodies haunted her heart
+and brain: she could not think; and at last she fell asleep to the
+sound of that fairy-like music within her soul.
+
+Tu the middle of the night she awoke. The moon shone through her window
+directly upon her bed. She listened. What sound was that? A merry
+uproar like the triumphal note of spring--the swift rushing of the
+brook--ascended to her windows. The ice was broken.
+
+And in slow, monotonous cadence the falling of the drops from the
+melting snow on the roof struck upon her ear.
+
+"Ah," she sighed, "the spring has come!"
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+He constantly wrote her letters full of chivalric fire and enthusiastic
+devotion. She never answered them. Then the war of 1859 broke out. One
+of her brothers informed her that Meineck had had himself transferred
+from the show-regiment--one but little adapted to service in the
+field--to which he had hitherto belonged to another which had been
+ordered to the front. A short time afterwards she received from the
+young hussar the following note:
+
+
+"In spite of the horror with which the loss of life inseparable from
+every campaign inspires me, I rejoice in the war. I rejoice in the
+opportunity of proving to you at last that I am worth something in the
+world. Grant me one favour: send me a line or two, or only a curl of
+your hair, or some little trinket that you have worn,--anything
+belonging to you that I can take with me into action. I kiss your dear
+hands, and am, as ever, with profound esteem and intense devotion,
+
+                             "Your              F. Meineck."
+
+
+She clasped her hands before her face and sobbed bitterly. And she, who
+all her life long had jeered at such sentimentality, cut off one of her
+curls, enclosed it in a small golden locket, and sent it to him with
+the following words:
+
+
+"Dear Lad,--
+
+"You burden me with a great responsibility. There was no need for you
+to plunge neck and heels into this campaign to prove to me that you
+were worth something. I send you herewith the trifle for which you ask:
+may it carry a blessing with it! God bring you safe home, is the
+earnest prayer of your faithful friend,
+
+                             "Karoline Leskjewitsch."
+
+
+June passed. The earth languished beneath the burning sun. Pale,
+feverish, and sleepless, Karoline Leskjewitsch dragged through the
+endless summer days, scraping lint,--she felt unfit for any other
+occupation,--and reading with hot, dry eyes the lists of the dead and
+wounded.
+
+One day she found his name in the list of the dead. She was crushed,
+utterly annihilated. A few hours afterwards, however, she received a
+letter from her brother, stating that the report of Meineck's death was
+a mistake; he was in Venice, severely wounded. She could not tell how
+it was, but on the same evening, almost without luggage, without
+telling any one of her plans, she started off with her old maid, and
+two days later arrived in Venice and was conducted by her brother to
+the room where the wounded man lay.
+
+Pale, wasted, with dishevelled hair and sunken features, he lay back
+among the pillows. Too weak to stir, he could only greet her with a
+blissful smile.
+
+She wore a black Spanish hat with large nodding feathers. As she
+entered she took it off, and, going to his bedside, she said, "I did
+not come merely to see you, but as a Sister of Charity, and I shall
+stay with you until you are well again."
+
+He replied, in a voice so weak as to be scarce audible, "To make me
+well a single word will suffice: say it!"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then, stooping over him, she pressed
+her lips to his.
+
+Who that saw them together ten years later could have believed it? No
+marriage was ever more romantic than theirs at first. His case was
+considered hopeless. The two physicians whom she questioned as to his
+condition declared his recovery impossible. Resolutely setting aside
+all opposition, she was married to him immediately, that she might
+nurse him devotedly and be enabled to support him in the dark hour of
+the death-struggle.
+
+At the end of ten weeks the physicians acknowledged that they had been
+mistaken. Not only was he out of danger, but he had well-nigh recovered
+his former strength and vigour. Early in October the pair took their
+wedding-trip to Bohemia. In matters of sentiment Franz was a poet to
+his fingertips, and he scorned the idea of the usual journey with his
+bride from one hotel to another. They spent their honeymoon in the old
+mill at Zalow.
+
+On many a fresh, dewy, autumnal morning the peasants saw the two tall
+figures strolling through the forest where the leaves were rapidly
+falling. She who had hitherto carried herself so erect now walked with
+bent head and with shoulders slightly bowed, as if scarcely able to
+bear the weight of her great happiness.
+
+They would wander unweariedly about the country for hours: they
+ransacked all the old peasant dwellings for antiquities, and they chose
+the spot for their graves in a picturesque, romantic churchyard. And
+when the light faded and they returned home, they would sit beside each
+other in the twilight in the spacious room where he had wooed her, and
+where now all the literary and scientific apparatus had given place to
+huge bouquets of autumn flowers filling the vases in every corner. The
+bouquets slowly changed colour, the cornflowers paled and the poppies
+grew black, in the darkening night; and something like profound
+melancholy would possess the lovers,--the sacred melancholy of
+happiness. With her hand in his, the wife would tell her husband of the
+mild March night in which the joyous sobbing of the brook had wakened
+her, calling to her that spring had come.
+
+"Believe it or not, as you please," Meineck was wont to say, often with
+a very bitter smile, in after-years, "I am really that fabulous
+individual, hitherto sought for in vain, the man who never, during the
+entire period of his honeymoon, w as bored for a single quarter of an
+hour."
+
+He took up his profession again; she would not hear of his resigning
+from the army for her sake. When he proposed it she clasped her arm
+tenderly about his neck and said, "Inactivity would ill become you, and
+I want to be proud indeed of my husband. I have but one duty now in
+life, to make you happy," she gently added.
+
+He was fairly dizzy with bliss. Was it possible, he sometimes asked
+himself, that an angel had actually descended from heaven to nestle in
+his heart and to conjure up for him a Paradise on earth? Her caresses
+gained in value from the fact that she was not so softly docile as
+other women, that now and then he had to overcome in her a certain
+acerbity and harshness.
+
+"A woman and a horse must both be possessed of amiable possibilities of
+obstinacy, or we take no pleasure in them," he declared.
+
+She bloomed afresh after her marriage. Her features, which were rather
+marked, grew softer, and had the freshness of those of a girl of
+eighteen. Her hair, which at his request she allowed to grow, curled in
+soft rings about her brow. Every one noticed how very beautiful she had
+grown; and he too, they said, had gained much since his marriage. His
+moral and intellectual stand-point was loftier. She refused to have an
+interest which he did not share; she expended an immense amount of
+acuteness in discovering what would arrest his attention in whatever
+she was reading, and either repeated it to him or read it aloud.
+
+The idea of playing the love-sick girl at her age was odious to
+her,--ridiculous; she wished to be his friend, his trusty comrade; but
+withal she spoiled him by a thousand delicate attentions far more than
+the youngest wife would have done. She exhausted her ingenuity in
+rendering his life delightful. She was not fond of going much into
+society; therefore she made his home attractive to his comrades. The
+entire regiment adored her, from the colonel to the youngest ensign.
+The women alone hated her. It was intolerable, they thought, that a
+blue-stocking should presume to eclipse them with the other sex.
+
+What became of all this bliss? It vanished little by little, as the
+snow slowly subsides, filtering into the ground.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+"I know myself," she had said to him when he wooed her; "I know myself:
+my paralyzing weakness will pass away, as will your intoxication."
+
+But his intoxication, after all, lasted longer than her weakness.
+
+After they had been married about five years, their second daughter,
+Estella, was born. The mother's health was terribly undermined for a
+while. Franz surrounded her with the most loving care, but she no
+longer took any pleasure in it. The fitful, unnatural glow kindled
+so late in her heart slowly died away; her illusions faded, her
+passion cooled. Nothing was left of the young spring deity of her
+imagination who had roused her heart from its cold wintry sleep, save a
+good-humoured, ordinary man whose society offered her no attraction and
+whose tenderness wearied her.
+
+Then came the campaign of '66. When he left her she contrived to shed a
+couple of tears, and during the fray in Bohemia her conscience pricked
+her terribly, but when the truce was proclaimed she was quite
+indifferent as to the length of his absence; it might have been
+prolonged _ad infinitum_, for all she cared. When he came home at the
+end of half a year his conscience was laden with a first infidelity.
+She had written an essay upon Don John of Austria.
+
+From this moment the downward course was rapid.
+
+If he could but have had a comfortable attractive home, he might
+perhaps have clung to it; he might have felt that he had something to
+live for, something to prevent, as he afterwards expressed it, his
+'going to the devil.'
+
+But he daily felt more and more of a stranger beneath his own roof, and
+his wife did nothing now to induce him to stay there; on the contrary,
+his presence bored her,--a fact which she did not always conceal.
+
+For a little while he restrained himself, and then----
+
+All the brutal instincts of his nature asserted themselves, and he took
+no pains to subdue them.
+
+                          *   *    *    *    **
+
+One joy, however, was his all through this dreadful time, his youngest
+daughter. He never took much pleasure in the elder of the two: she had
+inherited all her mother's caprice, without any of her talent.
+
+But little Stella was indeed a darling.
+
+When she was between one and two years old, at a time when his
+comrades, although but rarely, still met at his house at gay little
+suppers, he would go up to the nursery, where the child lay in bed, and
+if she happened to be awake and laughing at his approach he would take
+her in his arms just as she was in her little white night-gown and cap
+and carry her down-stairs to display her. She would obediently give her
+hand to every guest, but was not to be induced to unclasp the other arm
+from her father's neck. He petted and caressed her while his friends
+praised his pretty little daughter.
+
+When she had grown larger, she was always the first to run to meet him
+on his return home from parade. Often in winter when his cloak was
+covered with snow she would shrink away with a laugh, exclaiming, "Oh,
+papa, how cold! I cannot touch you."
+
+"Come here," he would say to her, and, opening his cloak, he would
+gather her up in his arms. "'Tis warm enough here, mouse, is it not?"
+And as she clung to him he would close the cloak about her, and she
+would thrust her hands through the opening in front and peep out,
+supremely happy.
+
+She often remembered in after-years how delicious it had been to nestle
+against her father's broad chest, protected in the darkness, and look
+out into the world through a narrow crack.
+
+He it was who gave her her first alphabet-blocks, more as a toy than by
+way of instruction. She ran after him continually to show him the words
+she had spelled out with them, taking especial delight in long learned
+expressions of which she did not understand a syllable. One of the
+first words she put together upon his writing-table as she sat upon his
+knee was 'phosphorescence.'
+
+He laughed, and told the officers of it at the riding-school. Poor
+fellow! He was secretly ashamed of his wretched home and his
+matrimonial failure, as well as of the miserable part he played in his
+household. As he could not speak of anything else, he talked of his
+child.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+His wife's article upon Don John of Austria appeared meanwhile in 'The
+Globe,' and, unfortunately, attracted considerable attention. One
+critic compared the author's brilliant style to that of Macaulay. From
+that moment she lost the last remnant of interest in her house and
+family.
+
+The praise which her article received went to her head; she recalled
+how when a young girl she had been called a genius, and how it had been
+said that if she only chose to take the slightest pains she could excel
+George Sand as an author, Clara Schumann as a pianiste, and Rachel as
+an actress. Yes, if she only chose! Now she did choose. She tried her
+hand in every department of literature, devised plots for tragedies and
+romances, and wrote essays upon every imaginable social problem,
+without achieving any really finished or useful result. She herself was
+quite dissatisfied with her efforts, but she never ascribed their
+imperfection to any want of capacity, but always to the fact that the
+free flight of her fancy was cramped by her domestic cares. Possessed
+by the demon of ambition, she turned aside from everything that could
+absorb her time or hinder her in the mad pursuit of her chimera. Social
+enjoyment did not exist for her: she secluded herself entirely from,
+society. If her husband wished to see his comrades he could find them
+at the club.
+
+Her household went to ruin. It was long before Meineck ventured to
+remonstrate with his highly-gifted wife; but at last scarcely a day
+passed without crimination and recrimination between the pair. In spite
+of his faults and aberrations from the right path, he was exquisitely
+fastidious in his personal requirements and a martinet in his love of
+order; his wife's slovenly habits and the disorder of her household
+disgusted him.
+
+"Good heavens! who," he sometimes asked, angrily, "could put up with
+such untidy rooms?--all the doors ajar, the drawers half open and their
+contents tossed in like hay; the servants dirty and ill trained, and
+the meals served in a way to destroy the finest appetite! Even the
+children are neglected."
+
+There came at last to be terrible scenes, in which Meineck would shout
+and swear and now and then shatter to pieces some chair or ottoman that
+stood in his way, while his wife sat motionless at her writing-table,
+now and then uttering some cold, cutting phrase, her pen suspended over
+her paper, longing for the moment when she should be left alone 'to
+work.'
+
+Yet at intervals there were still moments when she would seize the helm
+of her neglected household, would set things straight, and would
+preside in tasteful attire at a well-ordered table. Her inborn elegance
+upon such occasions could not but excite admiration, and for a few
+hours, sometimes for a couple of days, she would expend her talent upon
+what alone employed it worthily, in promoting the comfort of those
+about her.
+
+Upon such occasions Meineck would torment himself with self-reproach,
+would take upon himself the entire fault of her shortcomings, and
+would, so far as she would permit him, show her the most devoted
+attention. Scarcely, however, did he begin to have faith in the
+sunshine when it vanished.
+
+Moreover, these seasons of wondrous amiability on Karoline's part grew
+rarer and briefer,--particularly when she could not but acknowledge
+that her literary career by no means developed so brilliantly as she
+had hoped from the success of her Don John of Austria. She sought the
+cause of this, as has been said, not in the insufficiency of her own
+talent, but in the cramping nature of her domestic circumstances.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+One evening--Stella was about eleven years--old Meineck came home
+intoxicated. Chance willed that both his wife and his daughters saw him
+in this condition.
+
+The next day at the mid-day meal he was rather uncomfortable in their
+presence, and consequently talked more and faster than usual, assuming
+that air of bravado which some men are sure to adopt when they are
+particularly embarrassed. His affected self-possession vanished very
+soon, however. His wife merely bestowed upon him a cold greeting, and
+then entered into an absorbing conversation with Franziska, the elder
+daughter, upon some abstruse point of English law. She and the girl
+both avoided looking at him, and sat bolt upright, with virtuous
+indignation expressed in every feature.
+
+He turned from them to his loving little Stella. She was sitting, pale
+and with downcast eyes, before an empty plate. Poor little Stella! she
+too had been affected by the scene of the evening before. What business
+was it of hers? Was he the only man in the world who had ever been so
+overcome? Was that chit to school him? For the first time in her life
+he spoke harshly to her: "What is the matter with you? Why do you not
+eat? Are you ill?" And, beckoning to the servant, he put something upon
+her plate.
+
+She took up her knife and fork obediently, but she could not swallow a
+morsel, and the big tears fell upon her plate. He saw them perfectly
+well, although he pretended not to look at her.
+
+When the others had retired and he sat alone at the comfortless board,
+his head leaning on his right hand, his left drumming a tattoo on the
+table, as he reflected upon his squandered life, suddenly a little arm
+stole around his neck and two tender childish lips were pressed to his
+temple. He started: it was Stella! He took her on his knee and covered
+her head, her neck, even her little hands, with kisses, and his tears
+fell upon her brow. Neither of them ever forgot that moment.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Soon after this the husband and wife agreed so far as to find their
+life together intolerable, and they parted by mutual consent. Of course
+the mother took the children; what could Meineck have done with them?
+The legal divorce, with which she threatened him if he did not accede
+to a voluntary separation, would undoubtedly have assigned them to her.
+He was to be allowed to spend two weeks of every year beneath her roof
+to see the children. These arrangements concluded, she set out for
+Florence to collect materials for a history of the Medici,--which she
+never wrote.
+
+In the spring he went to her at Meran. His position in her household
+was so painful, however, that he did not stay all the allowed time: he
+felt disgraced even in his little Stella's eyes; she seemed estranged
+from him.
+
+He never came to be with them again. He often sent his daughters
+beautiful presents, and wrote them long, affectionate letters, but he
+made no further attempt to see them.
+
+Years passed. Meineck had risen to the rank of colonel; his wife
+meanwhile had tramped all over the map with her daughters, from Madrid
+to Constantinople, to collect historical material for all sorts of
+projected essays. She was now at her mill in Zalow, partly because her
+finances were at a low ebb, and partly because she intended at last to
+begin her great work. This work upon which she had settled definitively
+was 'The Part assigned to Woman in the Development of Universal
+History.'
+
+Franziska, who, oddly enough, could no longer agree with her mother,
+was lodging in Prague with the widow of a government official who
+rented a few rooms to teachers and bachelors, and preparing herself in
+a bleak little apartment to pass her final examinations. Poor Stella,
+who had meanwhile shot up into a tall miss of eighteen, went to Prague
+by railway three times a week in summer and winter, always alone, to
+take lessons, read everything she could lay hold of, from Milton's
+'Paradise Lost' to Hauff's 'Man in the Moon,'--and tramped about the
+country escorted by a very savage white wolf-hound.
+
+It was in November, and the ground was covered with snow, when a letter
+arrived from the colonel in Venice to his wife and daughters. He had
+been ordered to a southern climate on account of an affection of the
+lungs which had not yielded to a course of treatment at Gleichenberg,
+and he had now been in Venice for a month. If his daughters would
+consent, the letter went on to say, to come to cheer his loneliness for
+a while, he would do his best to make their stay in Venice agreeable to
+them.
+
+Franziska declared that she could not possibly interrupt her studies at
+this time; Stella announced that she was ready to set off on the
+instant. Her mother hesitated to allow her to travel alone, and looked
+about for a suitable escort for her, but Stella declared that she
+needed none. Had she not been to Prague continually alone by the
+railway? and where was the difference in going to Venice, except that
+it was farther off? Moreover, there were carriages for ladies only. It
+never occurred to this valiant young person, trained to economy as she
+had been by her learned mother, that she could travel otherwise than
+second-class.
+
+Her mother enjoined it upon her not to waste her time in Venice, and
+instead of a luncheon stuffed a 'Histoire de Venise' into her
+travelling-bag. The girl bought her ticket, attended to her
+luggage herself, and then mounted cheerily into a much overheated
+railway-carriage and was borne away.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                             A RUINED LIFE.
+
+
+How she rejoiced in the prospect of seeing him again, looking forward
+to the joy of nestling tenderly in his arms and telling him how she had
+longed for him during the many, many years, and how she had lain awake
+many a night telling herself stories of him,--that is, recalling every
+little incident in her memory with which he was connected!
+
+She did not recall him as she had last seen him, old before his time,
+with dark rings around his bloodshot eyes and deep wrinkles at the
+corners of his mouth, gray and worn; no, she saw him with fair curls
+and a merry, kindly look, sometimes in his dazzling hussar-uniform, but
+oftener in his blue undress-coat with breast-pockets. She could not
+possibly call him up in her memory without an accompaniment of the
+rattle of spurs and sabre. She saw his shapely, carefully-tended hands;
+she distinctly remembered the fragrance of Turkish tobacco, mingled
+with the odour of jasmine, with which all his belongings were
+saturated.
+
+For her he was always the brilliant young officer who had muffled her
+in his cloak when she ran to meet him.
+
+How long the journey seemed to her at first! Then she was suddenly
+assailed by a strange timidity: when the conductor took her ticket and
+announced that the next station was Venice she began to tremble.
+
+The train stopped; the conductor opened the door. With her heart
+throbbing up in her throat, she looked out, but saw no one whom she
+knew. No, her father had evidently not come to meet her! Could he have
+failed to receive her telegram? She noticed a gray-haired man in
+civilian's dress, with a crush-hat, and delicately chiselled features
+wasted by illness, and large hollow eyes, peering about as if he were
+looking for some one. A cold, paralyzing pang shot through her: his
+look met her own. While he had lived in her memory as a brilliant
+young officer, she had always been for him the undeveloped child of
+twelve, with tightly-stretched red stockings, and a short shapeless
+gown,--something that could be taken on his lap and caressed. But this
+daughter advancing towards him was a young lady, who could pass
+judgment upon, him, a judgment that could not be bribed, like that of a
+child, by caresses. He asked himself, with a shudder, how much she knew
+of his life, and whether she were capable of forgiving it, forgetting,
+in his dread, that a woman will forgive everything in the man whom
+she loves, be he husband, brother, or father, save cowardice and
+dishonour,--and as far as regarded the _point d'honneur_ the colonel's
+worst enemy could find nothing of which to accuse him.
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"Stella!" Instead of clasping her in his arms, he kissed her hand. "How
+are they all at home?" he asked, embarrassed. "Is your mother well? and
+Franzi?"
+
+"Oh, yes! They both gave me all sorts of kind messages for you.
+Franziska, unfortunately, could not come with me, for she could not
+interrupt her studies at this time."
+
+What frightfully correct German she spoke! Had they robbed him of his
+little Stella? His annoyance increased.
+
+"Where is your maid?" he asked.
+
+"Maid? I have none. Oh, we have not had a maid for a long time."
+
+"You came all the way alone?" the colonel exclaimed, in dismay,--"all
+alone?"
+
+"Yes. You have no idea how independent and practical I am."
+
+The colonel frowned; he would rather have found his daughter spoiled
+and helpless; but he said nothing, only asked about her luggage to hand
+it over to the porter of the Hotel Britannia, and then offered her his
+arm to conduct her to the gondola which was waiting for them. Arrived
+at the hotel, they got into the elevator to be taken to the third
+story, and they had as yet scarcely exchanged three words with each
+other.
+
+The pretty little _salon_ into which he conducted her looked out upon
+the Grand Canal and past the church of Santa Maria della Salute upon
+the Lido. The room was pleasantly warm, and in the centre a table was
+invitingly spread, the teakettle singing merrily, flanked by a flask of
+golden Marsala and a bottle of Bordeaux. A prismatic ray of sunshine
+fell across the neat creases of the snowy table-cloth.
+
+"Oh, how delightful!" cried Stella, and her eyes sparkled, while in her
+delicate and softly-rounded cheek appeared the dimple for which her
+father had hitherto looked in vain.
+
+"I had a little breakfast made ready for you, thinking that you might
+perhaps have had nothing very good to eat upon your journey," said he.
+
+"I have eaten nothing since I left home but biscuit, because I disliked
+going to the railway restaurants," she declared.
+
+And the colonel rejoined, "_Tiens!_ not entirely a strong-minded female
+yet, I see," and as he spoke he helped her take off her long brown
+paletot. "If I am not mistaken," he said, examining the clumsy article
+of dress, "this is an old army-cloak."
+
+"Indeed it is, papa," she replied, proudly, "one of your old cloaks: I
+had it altered by our tailor in Zalow, because it reminds me of old
+times." And this was all she could bring herself to say of the myriad
+charming and loving phrases she had prepared. "It is a great success,
+my coat. Do you not like it?" she asked.
+
+"Candidly, no;" he made reply. "Nevertheless I am greatly obliged to it
+for proving to me that, even in the clumsiest and ugliest garment ever
+devised by human hands to disfigure one of God's creatures, my daughter
+is still charming."
+
+She cast down her eyes with a little blush and was suddenly ashamed of
+her threadbare adaptation of which she had been so proud. Kindly, but
+still with some hesitation, he put his hand upon her shoulder and said,
+"You will let me look a little more closely at my daughter."
+
+A warm wave of affection suddenly surged up in her heart.
+
+"Do not look at me, papa; only love me," she exclaimed, and, throwing
+her arm around his neck, she nestled close to him. "You cannot imagine
+how rejoiced I was to come to you."
+
+And the poor wretch reverently bent his sad, weary head above his
+child's golden curls, and repentantly acknowledged to himself that he
+had not deserved so great mercy.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+When daylight had faded and the lanterns at the base of the old palaces
+flared up, casting reddish reflections to break and glimmer upon the
+surface of the lagunes, the colonel lit the lamp and put paper and
+writing-materials upon the table before Stella.
+
+"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for
+sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to
+her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand.
+At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a
+very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's
+finances?"
+
+"Low," said Stella, laconically.
+
+"Hm! I really do not know how much is necessary to maintain two
+daughters; perhaps I do not send her enough for you. She ought to
+have let me know. I do not wish that my children should be pinched,
+as--as----"
+
+"As they seem to be from the looks of my shabby wardrobe," Stella said,
+with a laugh. "Well, we are not quite so badly off, after all. If it be
+a question of buying books or curios, we can always scrape the money
+together; but if one wants a pair of new boots, the purse is empty."
+
+The colonel tugged discontentedly at his moustache.
+
+"I beg you to write to Franzi and ask her if she needs money," he began
+afresh. "I am, to be sure, living now upon my capital, but your share
+is secured to you, and I shall not last long."
+
+At first his meaning escaped her; she gazed at him with wide eyes;
+then, as she comprehended at last, the pen fell from her fingers, and
+she burst into a flood of tears.
+
+"Hush, hush, my darling; do not torment yourself beforehand. Perhaps I
+describe my condition to you as worse than it really is," he said,
+leaning tenderly over her, and, putting his hand beneath her chin, he
+looked deep into her dark eyes. "If sunshine can make a man well I am
+all right."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+No, it was too late,--too late! His physical strength could never be
+restored, his lungs nothing could heal; but with his child beside him
+his soul and heart gained health and strength. Since those first fair
+years of his married life, he had never been so happy as now, although
+he seldom quite forgot that he stood on the brink of the grave.
+
+Once, on a damp muggy November evening in a Viennese suburb he had seen
+a drunkard staggering along the wall in a narrow street, quite unable
+to find his way. A policeman was just about to take him into custody,
+when a little girl, muffled in rags and with a pale wizened face,
+suddenly appeared beside him out of the darkness, seized him by his
+red, trembling, swollen hand, and called in a hoarse, anxious voice,
+without impatience or harshness, but not without authority, 'Father,
+come home!' And the drunkard, who had paid no heed to the jeers of the
+passers-by, nor to the admonition of the policeman, hung his head, and
+without a word followed the weak, helpless little creature like a lamb.
+The colonel had stood and looked after them until the darkness
+swallowed them up. He recalled distinctly the girl's thin yellow
+braids, her long chin, the sordid red-and-black plaid shawl which she
+wore about her shoulders, and the worn old laced boots, far too big for
+her little feet and coming half-way up her naked little blue legs, and
+continually in her way as she walked.
+
+The little episode had made a painful impression upon him for a time,
+and then he had forgotten it. Now it arose in his memory, but
+transfigured, and as, clasping his daughter's hand, he went on to his
+grave, he compared himself in his secret soul with the drunkard led
+home by the child.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+He was very ill. Unaccustomed to spare himself, and without any real
+pleasure in life, he had increased his malady by months of entire want
+of care and nursing, until his physicians had insisted that a summer
+should be spent at a sanitarium in Gleichenberg. Partially restored, he
+had immediately, in direct opposition to all advice, re-entered the
+service. The autumn man[oe]uvres had brought on an inflammation of the
+lungs. How very ill he was never entered his mind, in spite of his
+speech to Stella. He thought he should live a couple of years longer,
+and his great dread was lest he should be pensioned off before the time
+because of his invalid condition. The pains that he took to maintain an
+upright military bearing aggravated all the evils of his case.
+
+There were a number of distinguished Austrians in the Hotel Britannia,
+some few of them invalids, most of them gay and pleasure-loving and
+well pleased to spend a few weeks amid picturesque surroundings and in
+pleasant society. The colonel was beloved by all, and they eagerly
+welcomed his pretty daughter,--even the ladies, whom the colonel
+consulted as to the necessary reform in the girl's wardrobe. She sat
+with her father in the midst of them all at the upper end of the table,
+the lower end, where the other inmates of the hotel were crowded
+together, being the subject of much merry scorn and stigmatized as 'the
+menagerie.' Compassion for the daughter of the dying man deepened the
+sympathy called forth by the young girl's grace and charm. Old
+gentlemen rallied her upon her conquests, and the young men paid her
+devoted attention. She had a special friend in the handsome black-eyed
+prince Zino Capito, who had an unusual share of time to bestow upon her
+since the latest mistress of his affections, the famous Princess
+Oblonsky, had just departed for Petersburg to take possession of the
+effects of her husband, suddenly deceased. He daily sent Stella
+magnificent flowers with which to adorn the hotel apartments for her
+father. "Invalids are so fond of flowers," he would say, with a smile
+that displayed his brilliant white teeth. And when the weather was fine
+and the colonel felt well enough, he would invite them to take a sail
+in his cutter upon the blue Adriatic.
+
+The colonel often spoke of his wife, longing to see her. The last
+_liaison_--that which had been the cause of a definite separation
+between himself and his wife, had robbed him of his self-respect, had
+disgraced him in his children's eyes, and had snatched from him every
+vestige of peace of mind--had dissolved itself more than two years
+before. The recollection of it disgusted him, but, like all men who
+have no future, he gladly allowed his thoughts to stray into the
+distant past. The wife from whom he had parted, elderly, learned, with
+her slovenliness and irritability, he had forgotten; his memory
+preserved the bride, in her light dress, bending above his couch of
+pain; he saw her on his marriage-day in the flood of sunlight which
+streaming through the tall window of his sick-room invested with a
+glorious halo the golden cross upon the improvised altar.
+
+One sunny day, as he was sailing in the Grand Canal in a gondola with
+Stella, he pointed to a beautiful old palazzo.
+
+"There is where I lay wounded in '59, when your mother came to nurse
+me. Those windows there were mine."
+
+In the evening of the same day, while Stella was writing to her mother
+and he lay half dozing on a lounge, he suddenly said, "Stella, do you
+think your mother could make up her mind to come to Venice with Franzi
+for a few weeks? She need not be in the same house with us, if that
+would bore her, but---- Tell her how much it would please me to see
+her; and," he added, with an embarrassed smile, "tell her I am really
+very ill: perhaps that may induce her to come."
+
+He awaited the reply to this letter with feverish eagerness. In a week
+there arrived a package of rather insignificant notices of a work of
+his wife's, just published at her own expense; two weeks later the
+answer to the letter appeared.
+
+"Well, what does your mother say?" asked the colonel, as he observed
+Stella deciphering the almost illegible document. "Read it aloud to
+me," he insisted: "you know everything that goes on at home interests
+me. Is she coming?"
+
+But Stella, with tears in her eyes, and a burning blush, stammered, "A
+letter must have been lost. This one never even mentions our plan!"
+
+The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India
+steamship.
+
+"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should
+have liked to ask her forgiveness."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken
+continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death,
+from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference
+to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and
+would drink a glass of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant
+exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose
+condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew
+less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an
+operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly,
+and sent Stella out of the room.
+
+"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier,
+and not afraid to die."
+
+"Under the circumstances, a couple of months."
+
+"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their
+course. It is all right."
+
+That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his
+writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what
+he had written.
+
+"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry,
+darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all.
+I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property
+is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any
+partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be,
+do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in
+Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the
+churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket.
+"Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in
+the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they
+lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"
+
+She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but
+perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The next day was her birthday.
+
+He gave her a golden bracelet to which was attached a crystal locket
+containing a four-leaved clover.
+
+"I cannot show you any partiality in my will," said he, "but wear that
+for my sake, darling. And if ever heaven sends you some great joy, say
+to yourself that your poor father prayed the dear God that it might
+fall to your share!"
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+One day the colonel received a letter bearing a Paris post-mark which
+seemed to depress him greatly. All day after receiving it he was
+thoughtful and taciturn. In the evening he wrote a long letter, pausing
+from time to time to cough sadly. As he folded it, Stella observed that
+he enclosed money in it. After apparently reflecting for a while, he
+drew from a case in his pocket a photograph of Stella which had been
+taken in Venice, gazed at it lovingly for a moment, seemed to hesitate,
+and finally enclosed it also in the envelope with the letter. Looking
+up, he became aware of his daughter's curious gaze, and suddenly grew
+confused. He sealed his epistle with unnecessary care, and then all at
+once reached both hands across the table and clasped Stella's between
+them, saying,--
+
+"You are wondering to whom I am sending my darling's picture? To my
+youngest sister, your aunt Eugenie. Do you remember her? Yes? You used
+to love her, did you not?"
+
+"Very much, papa; but--I thought she was dead."
+
+The colonel turned away his head; after a moment he drew Stella towards
+him, and said, softly, "She is not dead: I cannot tell you about her,
+do not ask me. But do not be hard to her, and if you should ever meet
+her, speak a kind word to her, for my sake."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+He still went daily below-stairs in the lift to take his meals, but he
+now dined at a small table alone with Stella, after the _table-d'hote_
+in the spacious, lonely dining-hall. His frequent attacks of coughing
+made him shun society. He dreaded annoying others.
+
+"I am no longer fit to mingle with my kind, Stella," he would say. "My
+poor little butterfly, it is tiresome to have such a father, is it
+not?"
+
+She, apparently, did not find it so. She desired nothing beyond the
+privilege of taking care of him, although she could be little more than
+a weak, helpless child. By day she cheered him with her lively talk,
+and at night if he stirred she was beside his bed in an instant in her
+long dressing-gown, her little bare feet thrust into slippers,
+supporting him in her arms if he coughed. Outside the moon shone full
+above the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Up from the garden was
+wafted the odour of roses and syringas, while above the swampy
+atmosphere of the lagunes, and mingling with the plash of waters at the
+base of the old palaces, floated sweet, sad melodies,--the songs of the
+evening minstrels of Venice,--
+
+
+           "Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"
+
+
+and
+
+
+           "Penso alla prima volta in cui volgesti
+            Lo sguardo soave in sino a me!"
+
+
+Sometimes she would fall asleep sitting beside his bed, her head
+resting on his pillow.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+She grew to look like a shadow, so pale and worn did she become. He did
+all that he could to prevent her from coming to him at night, even
+threatening to employ a nurse, but the threat was never fulfilled.
+
+In fact, he needed very little care but such as her affection insisted
+upon giving him; he was never confined to bed, only grew more and more
+inclined to rest on a lounge during the day. He was very thoughtful of
+others, and required but little service at their hands up to the very
+last, only seldom demanding any assistance in dressing. He grew nervous
+and restless, longed for change, yearned for his home with the fervent
+desire of a dying man. Before his mental vision hovered the picture of
+the old mill, with its old-fashioned garden, the small sparse forest
+with feathery underbrush at the foot of the knotty oaks, and the gray
+waters of the stream that wound through the autumn mist between bald
+stony banks. He felt an insane desire to see it all once more. For a
+long time he endured this yearning in silence, not venturing to express
+it; his wife had repulsed all advances of his too decidedly. But, good
+heavens! he needed so little room, he would not trouble her much; and
+then, besides, he was an old man, ill unto death: his demands upon her
+personally were restricted to a kind word now and then, a sympathetic
+pressure of the hand!
+
+Meanwhile, he grew worse and worse. Other complications heightened the
+peril in which he stood from the original disease. He complained that
+he could no longer endure the food at the hotel. His physician, who,
+like all physicians at health-resorts, avoided as far as possible the
+annoyance of having his patients die on his hands, strongly advised a
+change of air.
+
+Utterly dejected, his face turned away from her, the dying man begged
+Stella to ask her mother if he might come home.
+
+But Stella had already asked, and shortly afterwards an answer was
+received. The Baroness wrote that now, as ever, she was prepared to do
+her duty,--to receive him, and take care of him. The mill was always
+open to him.
+
+How he rejoiced in the prospect of home! He tried to help in the
+packing, but he was too languid. From his lounge he looked on while
+Stella managed it all, and now and then with a smile he would call her
+to him, only to stroke her hands and look into her dear, loving eyes.
+
+At last they set out. It was Easter Monday, in the latter half of
+April; the bells were all ringing solemnly, and dazzling sunshine lay
+upon the dark waters of the lagunes.
+
+All their acquaintance at the hotel surrounded the father and daughter
+as they stepped into their gondola. The little vessel was filled with
+flowers, farewell tokens to Stella, and from the balconies of the hotel
+many a white kerchief waved adieu to the travellers.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+At first they journeyed by short stages, sometimes taking a roundabout
+route for the sake of better lodgings at night, stopping at Villach and
+at Graetz. Then the colonel grew anxiously eager to be at home; he could
+no longer restrain his impatience. From Graetz he insisted upon making
+one journey of it, during which they had to change conveyances
+frequently. Every one was kind, showing all manner of attention, to the
+sick man and his pretty, loving, tender daughter. With every hour he
+became more weak and miserable. The last change they made he could
+scarcely manage to descend from the railway-carriage: two porters were
+obliged to help him into the other coupe.
+
+It was one of those first-class half-coupes for three occupants. Stella
+had not been able to procure for him, as hitherto, an entire carriage,
+and we all know how deceptive is the ease of those half-coupes.
+
+The girl propped her father up with rugs and cushions so that he found
+his position tolerable, and he fell asleep. The afternoon passed, and
+twilight came on. Greenish-yellow tints coloured the horizon, and a
+small white crescent gleamed above the darkening earth. Through the
+open window of the coupe came the warm, balmy air of the spring.
+Sometimes there mingled with the acrid, searching odour of the
+undeveloped foliage the full, sweet fragrance of some blossoming
+fruit-tree. A scarcely perceptible breeze swept gently and caressingly
+over the meadows, and lightly rippled the surface of the large quiet
+pond past which the train rushed. Here and there the level landscape
+was dotted by a village,--long barns and hay-ricks covered with
+blackened straw, grouped irregularly about some little church or castle
+among trees white with blossoms or pale green with opening leaf-buds.
+
+The colonel slept on. Suddenly Stella perceived that she had lost her
+bracelet,--the one with the four-leaved clover. She moved with a sudden
+start. The colonel awoke.
+
+"Where are we?" he asked.
+
+"In an hour we shall be at home: it is only three stations off," she
+said, soothingly, with a beating heart.
+
+He bent his head, folded his hands, and prepared to wait patiently. But
+it was impossible: a deadly anguish assailed him. He looked round in
+despair like some trapped animal.
+
+"I am ill!" he cried. "I cannot tell what ails me. I never felt so
+before!"
+
+He coughed convulsively, but briefly, then tried to move the cushions
+so that his head might find a more comfortable resting-place.
+
+"Take more room, papa; lay your head in my lap," Stella entreated,
+tenderly.
+
+He did so. He laid his head on her knees, and, taking her hand in his,
+held it against his cheek. The feverish unrest which had hitherto
+throbbed throughout his frame subsided, giving place to a delicious
+desire to sleep. For the last time the vision rose upon his mind of the
+drunken father being led home by his little girl; then all grew
+indistinct. He dreamed; he thought he was staggering painfully through
+a bog, when some one took him by the hand and led him across a narrow
+bridge beneath which gleamed dark, slowly-flowing water. He looked
+down; it was Stella who was leading him, but Stella as a little
+three-year-old child, with her simple little white night-cap tied
+beneath her chin, her rosy little bare feet showing beneath the hem of
+her white night-gown. The bridge creaked beneath him; he started and
+awoke.
+
+"Are we at home?" he asked, scarce audibly.
+
+"Almost, papa."
+
+He pressed her hand to his lips.
+
+The twilight deepened; a dark transparent mist seemed to veil the sky;
+the heavens showed as if through thin mourning crape; the broad shining
+edges of the ponds and pools were dim; the crescent moon grew brighter.
+
+The train whizzed along faster than ever, swaying from side to side on
+the sleepers. Suddenly Stella felt her father start violently; then he
+heaved a brief sigh, like that which one gives when surprised by
+anything unexpectedly delightful, or when one is suddenly relieved of a
+heavy burden. Then all was quiet,--quiet,--still as death! She bent
+over him and listened. In vain! She felt his hand grow cold and stiff
+in her own. A sudden anguish took possession of her. She was afraid in
+the darkness. Meanwhile, the lamp in the coupe was lighted. Its crude,
+yellow light fell upon the colonel's face.
+
+Was he asleep, or---- She held her own breath to listen for his. Her
+heart beat as though it would break; no longer able to control her
+distress, she called, "Papa!" then louder, "Papa! Papa!" He did not
+answer.
+
+The night-moths fluttered in through the open window and circled about
+the lamp; the fragrance of the blossoming cherry-trees filled the air;
+a cracked church-bell in the distance hoarsely tolled the Ave Maria.
+
+In an undertone Stella prayed 'Our Father;' but in the midst of it she
+burst into a convulsive fit of sobbing: she stroked and caressed the
+cold cheeks, the thin gray hair, of the dead. She knew that before many
+minutes were over he would be taken from her, and with him everything
+dear to her in life.
+
+Onward rushed the train. The fiery sparks flew like rain past the
+windows; there was a shrill whistle, then a stop. The journey's end was
+reached.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Her mother and sister had come to the station to meet them. When the
+conductor opened the door, Stella sat motionless, her father's head
+resting upon her knees.
+
+It was dark. The stars gleamed in the blue-black heavens.
+
+Mute and pale as the dead, the Baroness walked with Franziska and
+Stella behind her husband's corpse the short distance between the
+station and the mill. Some awkwardness on the part of the bearers
+released one arm of the dead man, and the hand fell and trailed on the
+earth. With a quick impetuous movement his wife took it in her own,
+pressed the cold, dead hand to her lips, and held it clasped in hers
+the rest of the way.
+
+They laid the body in the fresh, white bed, fragrant with lavender and
+orris, which had been prepared for the sick man in the corner room he
+had so loved, and in which the Baroness had placed a bouquet of white
+hawthorn in honour of his arrival.
+
+Two candles were burning at the head of the bed.
+
+Stella, who had, as it were, turned to marble, moving and speaking like
+an automaton, suddenly grew restless. She seemed to have forgotten
+something, and then looked for and found the locket which the colonel
+had given her for her mother, and which she had ever since worn around
+her neck. Very distinctly and monotonously she repeated the dying man's
+message and request as she handed the locket to her mother.
+
+"He begs you will hang this around his neck before they lay him in the
+grave; and once he said he should have liked once more to ask your
+forgiveness."
+
+The Baroness took the little case from her child's hand. She grew paler
+than ever, and her eyes were those of one startled by an inward vision
+of a long-forgotten past. The hawthorn shed a delicious fragrance;
+outside, the breeze of spring sighed among the weeping-willows, the
+brook gurgled and sobbed.
+
+All in an instant the old, gray-haired woman's hands began to tremble
+violently.
+
+"Leave me alone with him for a moment," she softly entreated; and
+Stella slipped away.
+
+In the terrible week ensuing upon that wretched evening the Baroness
+treated Stella with an unvarying and altogether pathetic tenderness; in
+that week Stella learned to comprehend what an irresistible charm this
+woman had been able to exercise,--learned to understand how longing for
+her, even after years of separation, had gnawed at the heart of the
+dying man.
+
+Then, to be sure, everything ran its old course, with the sole
+exception that the widow never uttered in the presence of her children
+one unkind word with regard to their father, but often alluded before
+them to his fine qualities.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+                            A RAINY EVENING.
+
+
+It has been raining all the afternoon,--it is raining still. The
+inmates of Erlach Court are house-bound. Freddy, because of
+disobedience, and in consequence of his sneezing thrice during the
+afternoon, has been sent to bed early and sentenced to a dose of
+elder-flower tea. His elders, instead of spending the evening, as
+usual, in the open air, are assembled in the drawing-room.
+
+Stasy has for the twentieth time finished 'Paul and Virginia,' and is
+now devoting herself to another kind of literature, Zola's 'Joie de
+vivre,'--of course only that she may testify to the horror with which
+such a book must inspire her. Every few minutes she utters an indignant
+'no!' in an undertone, or holds out the book to Katrine, one hand over
+her blushing face, with "That is really too bad!" Katrine, however,
+shows no inclination to participate in her horror; she waves the book
+aside, saying, "I do not care to read everything," and goes on
+crochetting at the afghan which is to be ready for Freddy's approaching
+birthday.
+
+The Baroness Meineck, meanwhile, is playing chess, the only game which
+she does not despise, with the general; and the captain is idling.
+
+Hitherto Stella has been singing to her own accompaniment, for the
+entertainment of the company, the pretty Italian songs she caught from
+the gondoliers on the Canal. She is still sitting at the piano, but she
+has stopped singing. Her slender hands touch the keys of the
+instrument, playing softly now and then a couple of bars from a Chopin
+mazourka, as she looks up at Rohritz, who, with both elbows on the top
+of the piano, leans towards her, talking.
+
+"How interested Rohritz seems in his talk with Stella! he is quite
+transformed," Leskjewitsch remarks.
+
+"He must answer when he is addressed," Stasy rejoins, sharply, looking
+up from her 'Joie de vivre.'
+
+"If he does not like to talk to the girl he can go away," the captain
+observes. "She has not nailed him to the piano."
+
+"He-he! she nails him with her eyes. Do you not see how she ogles him?"
+Stasy replies, with a giggle. "I wonder what he is telling her."
+
+"He is talking of Mexico, and of the phosphorescence of the tropical
+seas," the captain says, curtly.
+
+"Indeed? nothing more sentimental and personal than that? Since, then,
+it is not indiscreet, I think I will listen." And, clapping to her
+book, Anastasia stretches her long thin neck to hear.
+
+It is very quiet in the large apartment; except for the monotonous drip
+of the rain outside, and the click made by setting down the pieces on
+the chess-board, there is nothing to interfere with those who wish to
+listen to the conversation at the piano.
+
+"Knowing only the poor little sparks which you have seen twinkling
+through our Northern ocean on warm September evenings, you can form no
+idea of the gleaming splendour of the tropical seas, Fraeulein Meineck.
+The nights I spent on the deck of the Europa on my Mexican voyage I
+never can forget," says Rohritz.
+
+Stella, who has hitherto shown a genuine interest in all he has told
+her, suddenly assumes a whimsically wise air, and, striking a dissonant
+chord, asks, "How old were you then?"
+
+"I really do not understand----" he remarks, in some surprise.
+
+"Oh, there is no necessity for your understanding,--only for replying,"
+she rejoins, very calmly.
+
+"Twenty-four."
+
+It is one of her peculiarities, the result of her desultory and
+imperfect training, that she often plunges into a discussion of topics
+which every well-trained girl should carefully avoid.
+
+"Twenty-four," she repeats, thoughtfully; then, pursuing her inquiries,
+"And were you in love?"
+
+He laughs in some confusion.
+
+"You are putting me through an examination."
+
+"I allow you the same privilege," she declares, magnanimously. "Your
+answer sounds evasive. Apparently you were in love. I merely wanted to
+know, that I might judge how large a percentage of romance I must
+deduct from your description. All things considered, I can no longer
+accord any genuine faith to your account of the phosphorescence of the
+tropical seas; when people are in love they see everything as by a
+Bengal light."
+
+This sententious remark of course induces Rohritz to put the laughing
+inquiry, "Do you speak from experience, Baroness Stella?"
+
+"Certainly," she replies, with a convincing absence of embarrassment.
+"I have been through it all with my sister: she saw her
+artillery-officer by a Bengal light, or she never would have left
+science in the lurch for his sake, for, heaven knows, he was just like
+all the rest, except that in addition--he played the piano. Just fancy!
+an artillery-officer playing the piano!--Wagner, of course! Two dogs
+and a cat of ours went mad at the sight. But Franzi assured me that her
+artillery-officer's touch reminded her of Rubinstein. So you see how
+trustworthy your descriptions are."
+
+Rohritz laughs good-humouredly, then says, "Even if I admit that on
+board the Europa I still had a little touch of the disease you mention,
+I must maintain that the delirious period had passed."
+
+"Hm! one thing more," says Stella, pursuing still more boldly the
+devious path upon which she has entered. "I must know this precisely.
+Were you in love with a married woman? _Un homme qui se respecte_ is
+never in love except with a married woman,--at least in all the
+novels."
+
+"Stella!" Stasy calls, horrified.
+
+Even Rohritz, who has hitherto listened very patiently to Stella's
+nonsense, seems unpleasantly affected by this speech of hers. He looks
+penetratingly into the young girl's eyes, and becomes aware that he is
+gazing into depths of innocence. Before he has time to say anything,
+Stasy calls out, in a shocked tone,--
+
+"Stella, you are frivolous to a degree----"
+
+Stella blushes crimson; her eyes fill with tears; she makes awkward
+little motions with her hands upon the keys, and plays a couple of bars
+from Thalberg's Etude in Cis-moll.
+
+"Frivolous?--frivolous? But, Anastasia, I was only jesting," she
+murmurs, and, turning to Rohritz as if for protection, she adds, "It
+needed very little logic to guess that, for if you had been in love
+with a young girl there would have been no need for you to be unhappy
+and to go sailing about on tropical seas to distract your mind: you
+could simply have married her."
+
+"But suppose the young girl would not have him?" the captain asks,
+merrily.
+
+Stella looks first at Rohritz, then at her uncle, and murmurs, "That
+never occurred to me."
+
+A burst of laughter from the captain--laughter in which Katrine joins
+heartily and Stasy ironically--is the reply to this confession.
+
+"Acknowledge the compliment, Rohritz; come, acknowledge it,"
+Leskjewitsch exclaims in the midst of his laughter.
+
+But Rohritz maintains unmoved his serious, kindly expression of
+countenance.
+
+"It is not given to even the greatest minds to contemplate all possible
+contingencies," he says, dryly.
+
+The Baroness Meineck, absorbed in her game, has heard little,
+meanwhile, of what has been going on about her; she now suddenly
+remembers that it is incumbent upon her to attend to her daughter's
+training.
+
+"I suppose you have been uttering some stupidity again, Stella," she
+observes, coldly; "you are incorrigible!"
+
+"Poor mamma, she really is to be pitied," Stella sighs, her sense of
+humour asserting itself in spite of her; "she has no luck with her
+children. Her clever daughter _commits_ stupidities, and her silly
+daughter _utters_ them. Which is the worse?"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                             A LOVE-AFFAIR.
+
+
+It rains the entire ensuing night, and far into the forenoon of the
+next day. The hollows worn in the stone pavement of the terrace are
+filled with water, and form little brown ponds. The buff-coloured
+castle has become orange-coloured, and looks quite worn with weeping.
+The lawns reek with moisture, and the Malmaison roses are pale and
+draggled. Drowned butterflies float on the surface of the pools, and
+fantastic wreaths of mist curl about the foot of the mountains on the
+farther side of the Save. No sun is to be seen amid the gray-brown rack
+of clouds.
+
+At last the rain falls more slowly; the chirp of a bird makes itself
+heard now and then; a white watery spot in the gray skies shows where
+the sun is hiding; slowly it draws aside the veil from its beaming
+face, and between the torn and flying masses of cloud the heavens laugh
+out once more, blue and brilliant.
+
+Tempted forth by the delightful change in the weather, Katrine, Stasy,
+and Stella venture out to take their daily bath in the Neuring. In its
+normal condition the Neuring is a clear, sparkling stream, flowing
+freely over its pebbly bed in constant angry attack upon diverse
+fragments of rock which look in magnificent disdain upon its impotent
+assaults. A bath in the current between the largest of these fragments
+of rock, where for the convenience of the bathers a stout pole has been
+fixed, is a great favourite among the delights of Erlach Court.
+
+One shore of the stream slopes, flower-strewn and verdant, nearly to
+the water's edge, and here stands a roughly-constructed bath-house,
+from which wooden steps lead down into the water.
+
+Stella is sitting, in a very faded bathing-suit of black serge trimmed
+with white braid, on the lowest of these steps, gazing sadly into the
+stream.
+
+"I certainly did behave with unpardonable stupidity yesterday," she
+says, twisting her golden hair into a thick knot and fastening it up at
+the back of her head with a rather dilapidated tortoise-shell comb.
+
+"When do you mean?" asks Stasy. "At lunch, or in the evening, or early
+this morning?"
+
+"Yesterday evening, in the drawing-room," Stella replies, somewhat
+impatiently.
+
+"That talk with Rohritz was a little reprehensible," Katrine says, with
+a laugh.
+
+"In your place, after having been guilty of such a breach of decorum, I
+could not make up my mind to look him in the face," Stasy declares.
+
+She slips into the water before the others, and is now trying, holding
+by the pole between the rocks, to tread the waves. The water hisses and
+foams, as if resenting her trampling it down.
+
+"Was it really so bad, Aunt Katrine?" Stella asks, changing colour.
+
+Katrine leans towards her, gives her a kindly pat on the shoulder,
+lifts her chin caressingly, and says,--
+
+"Well, your remarks were certainly not extraordinarily pertinent, but I
+hardly think that Rohritz took them ill. 'Tis hard to take things ill
+of such a pretty, stupid, golden butterfly as you."
+
+With which Katrine cautiously sets her slender foot among the yellow
+irises and white water-lilies on the edge of the water.
+
+"It was terrible, then,--it must have been terrible if even you thought
+it so!" says Stella, as the tears rush to her eyes, and drop into the
+stream at her feet.
+
+"Don't be a child," Katrine consoles her: "the matter was of no great
+consequence."
+
+"Certainly not," Stasy adds, rather out of breath from her exertions.
+"What he thinks can make no kind of difference to you, and he assuredly
+will not report elsewhere your very strange remarks. Probably they
+interest him so little that he will soon forget all about them."
+
+"Come and take your bath; you are wonderfully averse to the water
+to-day," Katrine calls out to the girl, who still sits sadly upon the
+wooden step, lost in reflection. "Indeed you need not take your
+stupidity so much to heart: it would have been nothing at all, if there
+had not been rather an odd story connected with Rohritz's sudden voyage
+across the ocean."
+
+"Ah!" exclaims Stella, paddling through the water to her aunt, who,
+clinging to the pole, is now enjoying the current. "Really, something
+romantic?" she asks, curiously.
+
+"There was nothing romantic in the affair save his way of taking it,"
+Katrine says, with a dry smile, "and therefore the remembrance of this
+piece of his past may be particularly distasteful to him."
+
+"Ah, but it was a married woman, was it not? Do tell me!" Stella
+entreats, burning with curiosity.
+
+"No, Solomon," Katrine replies: "it was a young, unmarried woman, not
+so very young either, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, well born, a
+Baroness von Foehren, a Livonian with Russian blood in her veins, poor,
+ambitious, prudent, and just clever enough to entertain a man without
+frightening him. I saw her once, and but once, at the theatre; she was
+very beautiful, and I took an extraordinary dislike to her. I am always
+ready to applaud Judic in _opera-bouffe_, and on _grand prix_ day in
+the Bois it interests me exceedingly to observe the _dames aux
+camellias_ through my opera-glass; but nothing in this world so
+disgusts me as demi-monde graces in a woman who ought to be a lady."
+
+"I think you are a little severe in your judgment of Sonja. She was not
+irreproachable in her conduct," Stasy, who has for years maintained a
+kind of friendship with the person under discussion, here interposes,
+"not irreproachable, but----"
+
+In all that touches her extremely strict ideas of propriety and
+fitness, Katrine understands no jesting.
+
+"Her conduct was not only 'not irreproachable,' it was revolting!" she
+exclaims. "If she interests you, Stella, I can show you her photograph;
+at one time you could buy it everywhere. She was made to turn a young
+fellow's head. With regard to women men really have such wretched
+taste."
+
+"Oho, Katrine! That sounds as if you said it _par depit_," Stasy says,
+archly.
+
+"I do not in the least care how it sounds," Katrine rejoins.
+
+"Ah, tell me about Baroness Foehren," Stella entreats.
+
+"There is not much to tell. He had a love-affair with her----"
+
+"A love-affair!" The words fall instantly from Stella's lips, as one
+drops a burning coal from the hand.
+
+"Yes," Katrine goes on. "It happened in Baden-Baden, where the Foehren
+was staying with a relative of hers. Rohritz paid her attention, and
+something or other gave occasion for a scandalous report. In despair at
+having compromised the lady of his affections, Rohritz instantly
+proposed to her, and informed his father of his determination to marry
+her. The old Baron, a man of unstained honour, and imbued with a strong
+feeling of responsibility in maintaining the dignity of the Rohritz
+family, was rather shocked by this hasty resolve, and, viewing the
+affair from a far less romantic and far more sensible point of view
+than that taken by his son, made inquiries into the reputation of the
+lady in question, and--I cannot exactly explain it to you, Stella, but
+the result of his investigations was that he informed Edgar that he
+need be troubled by no conscientious scruples on behalf of this
+adventuress, and that he positively refused his consent to the
+marriage."
+
+"And then?" asks Stella.
+
+"I do not know precisely what happened," says Katrine. "Jack told me
+all about it lately with characteristic indignation, but I did not pay
+much attention. The affair dragged on for a while. Edgar, who was then
+most romantically inclined, would not resign the Foehren, corresponded
+with her,--how I should have liked to read those letters!--finally
+fought a duel with one of her slanderers, and was severely wounded.
+When he recovered at last after several dreary months of
+convalescence, he learned that the Foehren was married to a wealthy
+Russian."
+
+"How detestable!" exclaims Stella.
+
+"Good heavens! she had a practical mind," Stasy interposes. "I, to be
+sure, would on occasion have married a tinker for love, but the young
+women of the present day are not ashamed to declare that their choice
+in marriage is influenced by a box at the theatre, brilliant equipages,
+and toilets from Worth. Old Rohritz would have disinherited Edgar, or
+at all events allowed him a very inadequate income, while Prince
+Oblonsky----"
+
+"Prince Oblonsky!" Stella hastily exclaims. "Did you say Oblonsky?"
+
+"Yes; that was her husband's name, Boris Oblonsky. Now she is a widow,
+and still perfectly beautiful."
+
+"Perfectly beautiful. I saw her in Venice at the Princess Giovanelli's
+ball," says Stella, "'with brilliant and far-gazing eyes.' So that was
+she!" And with a slight anxiety she wonders to herself, "A love-affair!
+What is the real meaning of a love-affair?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                                 FOUND.
+
+
+A sleepy afternoon quiet broods over Erlach Court. Anastasia is sitting
+in the shade of an arbour, embroidering a strip of fine canvas with
+yellow sunflowers and red chrysanthemums. At a little distance the
+Baroness Meineck, who has volunteered to superintend Freddy's education
+during her stay at Erlach Court, is giving the boy a lesson in
+mathematics, making such stupendous demands upon his seven-year-old
+capacity that, ambitious and intelligent though the young student be,
+he is beginning to grow confused with his ineffectual attempts to
+follow the lofty flight of his teacher's intellect. Stella, with whom
+mental excitement is always combined with musical thirst, is all alone
+in the drawing-room, playing from the 'Kreisleriana.' Her fingers glide
+languidly over the keys. "A love-affair! What is the real meaning of a
+love-affair?" The question presents itself repeatedly to her mind, and
+her veins thrill with a mixture of curiosity, desire, and dread.
+Lacking all intimacy with girls of her own age or older than herself,
+who might have enlightened her on such points, she has the vaguest
+ideas as to much that goes on in the world. A love-affair is for her
+something connected with rope ladders and peril to life, like the
+interviews of Romeo and Juliet, something that she cannot fancy to
+herself without moonlight and a balcony. Her innocent curiosity
+flutters to and fro, spellbound, about the Baden-Baden episode in
+Rohritz's youth, as a butterfly flutters above a dull pool the pitiful
+muddiness of which is disguised by brilliant sunshine, the blue
+reflection of the skies, and a net-work of pale water-lilies.
+
+She could not tear her thoughts from Baden-Baden, which she knew partly
+from Tourganief's 'Smoke,' partly in its present shorn condition from
+her own experience,--Baden-Baden, which when the Foehren and Rohritz
+were together there might have been described as a bit of Paradise
+rented to the devil.
+
+"I wonder if she called him Edgar when they were alone?" the girl asked
+herself.
+
+Her heart beat fast. It was as if she had by chance read a page of some
+forbidden book negligently left lying open. Not for the world would she
+have turned the leaf to read on, for, in common with every pure, young
+girl, when she approached the great mystery of love she was possessed
+by a sacred timidity almost amounting to awe.
+
+"I wonder if he was very unhappy?" she asks herself. "Yes, he must have
+been;" Katrine had told her that he grew gray with suffering. A great
+wave of sympathy and pity wells up in her innocent heart. "Yes, she was
+very beautiful!" she says to herself.
+
+She perfectly remembers her at the Giovanelli ball, leaning rather
+heavily on her partner's arm, her eyes half closed, her head inclined
+towards his shoulder, and again in a solitary little anteroom before a
+marble chimney-piece, below which a fire glowed and sparkled, lifting
+both hands to her head, an attitude that brought into strong relief the
+magnificent outline of her shoulders and bust. While thus busied with
+arranging her hair, she smiled over her shoulder at a young man who
+was leaning back in an arm-chair near, his legs crossed, holding his
+crush-hat in both hands, regarding her with languid looks of
+admiration.
+
+This was Stella's friend, black-eyed Prince Zino Capito. All Venice was
+then talking of the Prince's adoration of the beautiful Livonian.
+
+"What is it about her that makes every man fall in love with her?"
+Stella asks herself. And a sudden pang of something like envy assails
+her innocent heart. Ah, she would like just one taste of the wondrous
+poison of which all the poets sing. "Will any one ever be in love with
+me?" she asks herself. "Ah, it must be delicious,--delicious as music
+and the fragrance of flowers in spring; and I should so like to be
+happy for once in my life, even were it for only a single hour.
+But----" Her eyes fill with tears: what has she to do with happiness?
+it is not for her; of that she has been convinced from the moment when
+on that last melancholy journey with her father she found she had lost
+her little amulet. Poor papa! he would gladly have bestowed happiness
+upon her from heaven, and instead he had taken her happiness down with
+him into the grave. Poor, dear papa!
+
+The breath of the roses outside steals in through the closed blinds,
+sweet and oppressive. Among the flowers below awakened to fresh beauty,
+the bees hum loudly, plunging into the honeysuckles, and gently as if
+with reverence touching the pale refined beauty of the Malmaison roses,
+while above the acacias and lindens they are swarming.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Rohritz has been occupied in writing his usual quarterly duty-letter to
+his married brother. As with all men of his stamp, a letter is for him
+a great undertaking, accomplished wearily from a strict sense of duty.
+
+Seated at the writing-desk of carved rosewood bestowed upon him long
+since by an aunt and provided with many secret drawers and with all
+kinds of silver-gilt and ivory utensils of mysterious uselessness, he
+covers four pages of English writing-paper with his formal, regular
+handwriting, and then looks for his seal wherewith to seal his epistle.
+Rummaging in the various drawers and receptacles of the desk, he comes
+across a small bracelet,--a delicate circlet to which is suspended a
+crystal locket containing a four-leaved clover.
+
+For a moment he cannot recall how he became possessed of the trifle.
+Could it have been the gift of some sentimental female friend? In vain
+he taxes his memory: no, it certainly is no memento of the kind. He
+swings it to and fro upon his finger, letting the sunshine play upon
+it, and then first perceives a cipher graven on the crystal, a Roman S,
+surmounting a star. Involuntarily he murmurs below his breath,
+"Stella!" and suddenly remembers where he found the bracelet,--on the
+red velvet seat of a first-class coupe, three years before, towards the
+end of April.
+
+He had advertised it in the Viennese and Graetz newspapers, doing his
+best to restore the _porte-bonheur_ to its owner, but in vain.
+
+"In fact----" In an instant he recalls what Leskjewitsch had told him
+of Stella's sad journey with her father. He smiles, leaves his letter
+unsealed, goes to the window, looks down, into the garden, sees Stasy
+busy with her chrysanthemums, hears, proceeding from a garden-tent at a
+little distance, decorated with red tassels, the contralto tones of the
+Baroness Meineck and the depressed and weeping replies of her pupil.
+
+Through the languid summer air glide the harsh, forced modulations of
+the 'Kreisleriana.'
+
+"Ah!" He wends his way to the drawing-room. There, in the romantic
+half-light that prevails, all the blinds and shades being closed to
+shut out the hot July sun, he sees a light figure seated at the piano.
+At his entrance she turns her golden head.
+
+"Are you looking for any one?" she asks, in the midst of No. 6 of the
+'Kreisleriana,' rather confused by his entrance, and trying furtively
+to brush away the tears that still show upon her cheeks.
+
+"Yes; I was looking for you, Baroness Stella."
+
+"For me?" she asks, in surprise.
+
+"Yes; I wanted to ask you something."
+
+"Well?" She takes her hand from the keys and turns round towards him,
+without rising.
+
+"Three years ago I found a bracelet in a railway-coupe. Coming across
+it by chance to-day, I perceive that it is marked with your cipher.
+Does it belong----"
+
+But Stella does not allow him to finish; deadly pale, and trembling in
+every limb, she has sprung up and taken the bracelet from his hand.
+
+"Oh, you cannot tell all you restore to me with this bracelet!" she
+exclaims, and in her inexpressible delight she holds out to him both
+her hands.
+
+Are they so absorbed in each other as not to observe the apparition
+which presents itself for an instant at the drawing-room door, only to
+glide away immediately?
+
+Meanwhile, in the garden a thrilling drama is being enacted. So
+thoroughly bewildered at last by the Baroness's system of instruction
+that his brain refuses to respond to even the small demands which her
+growing contempt for his capacity permits her to make upon it, poor
+Freddy feels so thoroughly ashamed of his inability that he lifts up
+his voice and weeps aloud. When his mother hastens to him to learn what
+has so distressed her son, he throws his arms around her waist and
+cries out, in a tone of heart-breaking despair, "Mamma, mamma, what
+will become of me? I am so stupid,--so very stupid!"
+
+Katrine finds this beyond a jest. "I must entreat you not to trouble
+yourself further with my boy's education, if this is the only result
+you achieve, Lina," she says, provoked, whereupon the Baroness replies,
+angrily,--
+
+"I certainly shall not insist upon continuing my lessons, especially as
+never in my life have I found any one so obtuse of comprehension in the
+simplest matters as your son."
+
+"Ah, you insinuate that my boy is a blockhead. Let me assure you,
+however----"
+
+In what mutual amenities the conversation of the sisters-in-law would
+have culminated must remain a subject of conjecture; for at this moment
+Stasy comes tripping along, saying, with an affected smile,--
+
+"How wonderfully one can be mistaken as to character in others! Yes,
+yes, still waters--still waters. Ha! ha!"
+
+"What do you mean with your still waters?" Katrine asks,
+contemptuously.
+
+"Hush!" And Stasy archly lays her finger on her lip with a significant
+glance towards the boy, who with his arms still about his mother's
+waist is drying his tears upon her sleeve.
+
+"Run into the house, Freddy, and bathe your eyes, and then we will take
+a walk," Katrine says to her little son. "What is the matter?" she then
+asks, coldly, turning to Stasy.
+
+"Rohritz--aha!--we all thought him an extinct volcano. I, notoriously
+reserved as I am, permitted myself to tease him slightly now and then,
+thinking him entirely harmless. And now, now I find him in the yellow
+drawing-room, _tete-a-tete_ with Stella, both her hands in his, gazing
+into her lifted eyes, deep in a flirtation,--a flirtation _a
+l'Americaine_,--quite beyond what is permissible. Really perilous!"
+
+"If you thought the situation perilous for Stella, I really do not
+understand why you did not interrupt the _tete-a-tete_," says Katrine,
+severely.
+
+"It was no affair of mine," Stasy replies. "How was I to know that so
+sentimental an interview would not end in an offer of marriage?
+Improbable, to be sure, for Rohritz is too cautious for that,--even
+although he allows himself on a summer afternoon to be so far carried
+away as to kiss the hand of a pretty girl in a _tete-a-tete_ with her."
+
+Her eyes sparkling with anger, the Baroness hurries into the castle and
+up-stairs to the drawing-room.
+
+"Stella, what are you about here? Have you nothing to do? Come with
+me!"
+
+In terror Stella follows her mother as she strides on to their
+apartments. There the Baroness closes the door behind her, and, seizing
+her daughter by the arm, says,--
+
+"Must I endure the disgrace of having my child conduct herself so
+shamelessly in a strange house that strangers inform me that she is
+flirting _a l'Americaine_ with young men?"
+
+"I, mother! I----" exclaims Stella, her eyes riveted upon her mother's
+angry face. "But I assure you---- Mother, mother, how can you say such
+dreadful things to me?" And the girl bursts out sobbing. "It is Stasy
+that has accused me. How can you attach any importance to what she
+says?"
+
+"No matter what Stasy says. Your conduct is extraordinary."
+
+"But, mother, mother----"
+
+"What have you to do with _tete-a-tetes_ with young men?" the Baroness
+asks, with dramatic effect, the same Baroness who sent her child
+to a singing-teacher three times a week without an escort. "It is
+improper,--very improper. What must Rohritz think of you? You will come
+to be like your aunt Eugenie!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+                           FREDDY'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+It is not to be denied that Stella's behaviour is always unconventional
+and sometimes very thoughtless. On the whole, however, her little
+indiscretions do not detract from her great natural charm. The
+Baroness, not having taken any pains with her education, never of
+herself notices these little indiscretions. But if a stranger alludes
+to them her maternal ambition is profoundly outraged, and the
+inevitable result is the bursting of a thunder-storm above Stella's
+innocent head, a storm always sure to culminate in the fearful words,
+"You will come to be like your aunt Eugenie!"
+
+The real meaning of these words Stella never understands, since no one
+has ever told her what has become of her aunt Eugenie, but she knows
+that their significance must be terrible. Cowed and unhappy, she glides
+about after every such explosion as if guilty of some crime, until her
+bright animal spirits gain the upper hand and she begins afresh to talk
+and to be thoughtless.
+
+Her mother's last indignant remonstrance puts an end to all the kindly
+freedom of her intercourse with Rohritz. She avoids him so evidently,
+is so stiff and monosyllabic with him, that he at last questions the
+captain as to the cause of this change, and receives from his friend a
+distinct explanation.
+
+"It is indeed no great bliss to be my sister's daughter," the captain
+concludes. "Beneath her mother's intermittent care Stella seems to
+me like a noble, sensitive horse beneath a very bad rider. I hate to
+look on at such cruelty to animals, and I should be heartily glad to
+find a good husband for her before her mother entirely ruins her. He
+will have to be a good, noble-hearted fellow, clever and gentle at
+once, with a firm, light hand, and plenty of money, for the child has
+nothing,--more's the pity."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The time never flies faster than in summer: with no hurry, but with
+graceful celerity, the lovely July days glide past in their rich robes
+of dark green and sky-blue. The genii of summer play about us, fling
+roses at our feet, and strew the grass with diamonds. They offer us
+happiness, show it to us, whisper insinuatingly, "Take it,--ah, take
+it." And some of us would gladly obey, but their hands are bound, and
+others, remember how they once, on just such enchanting summer days,
+stretched out their hands in eager longing for the roses, and at their
+touch the roses vanished, leaving only the thorns in their grasp, and
+they turn away with a mistrustful sigh. Others, again, examine the
+offered joy hesitatingly, critically, refuse to decide, linger and
+wait, and before they are aware the beneficent genii have vanished;
+autumnal blasts have driven them away with the roses and the foliage.
+The sun shines no longer, the skies are gray, and a cold wind sings a
+shrill song of scorn in their ears.
+
+'Passing!--passing!' One week, two weeks have passed since the Meinecks
+arrived at Erlach Court. Each day Rohritz has found Stella more
+charming, each day he has paid her more attention, but his real
+intimacy with her has increased not one whit.
+
+To-day is Freddy's birthday. Stella has presented him with a gorgeous
+paint-box; he has received all sorts of gifts and toys from his parents
+and relatives, and he has, of course, been more than usually petted and
+caressed by his father and mother. His delight is extreme when he
+learns that a picnic has been arranged for the day in his honour.
+
+None of the older inmates of the castle take any special pleasure in
+picnics; least of all has Katrine any liking for these complicated
+undertakings. But Freddy adores them; and what would Katrine not do to
+give her darling a delight?
+
+It is Sunday. A gentle wind murmurs melodiously through the dewy grass,
+and sighs among the thick foliage of the lindens like a dreamy echo of
+the sweet monotonous tolling of bells that comes from the gleaming
+white churches and chapels on the mountain-slopes on the other side of
+the Save. From the open windows of the dining-room can be seen across
+the low wall of the park the brown peasant-women, with pious,
+expressionless faces, and huge square white headkerchiefs knotted at
+the back of the neck, marching along the road to church. Above, in the
+dark-blue sky myriads of fleecy clouds are flying, and swarms of airy
+blue and yellow butterflies are fluttering about the Malmaison roses
+and over the beds of heliotrope and mignonette in front of the castle.
+
+There has been rain during the previous night, but not much, and the
+whole earth seems decked in fresh and festal array. The sun shines
+bright and golden, but the barometer is falling,--a depressing fact
+which Baron Rohritz announces to all present at the birthday-breakfast.
+
+Freddy's face grows long, and Katrine exclaims, hastily, "Your
+barometer is intolerable!" She has no idea of sacrificing her child's
+enjoyment to the whims of an impertinent barometer.
+
+"Yes, Edgar, your barometer is a great bore," the captain remarks.
+
+Whoever presumes to express an unpleasant or even inconvenient truth is
+sure to be regarded as a great bore.
+
+Meanwhile, Katrine has stepped out upon the terrace and convinced
+herself that the weather is superb. Annihilating by a glance Rohritz
+and his warning, she orders the servant who has just brought in a plate
+of hot almond-cakes to have the horses harnessed immediately.
+
+Rohritz placidly twirls his moustache, and remarks, as he rises from
+table, that he will strap up his mackintosh. A few minutes afterwards
+the carriages, a light-built drag and a solid landau, are announced. To
+the drag are harnessed a couple of fiery young nags, while in default
+of the carriage-horses, which have been ailing for a few days, the
+landau is drawn by a pair of hacks, by no means spirited or
+prepossessing in appearance.
+
+The guests stand laughing and talking on the sweep before the castle.
+Katrine's voice is heard giving orders; Stella is busy helping the
+captain to pack away in the carriages the plentiful store of
+provisions.
+
+Swathed in airy clouds of muslin, sweetly suffering, but resisting the
+united entreaties of all the rest that she will stay at home, Anastasia
+leans against the vine-wreathed balustrade of the terrace, a
+vinaigrette held to her nose.
+
+Before Katrine has quite finished issuing her commands, the captain
+with Stella mounts upon the front seat of the drag, the general taking
+his place beside Freddy on the back seat. Want of room obliges the
+captain to act as driver himself. He gathers up the reins, and his
+steeds start off gaily. The rest of the company settle themselves as
+best they can in the landau, the Baroness and Fraeulein von Gurlichingen
+on the back seat, Rohritz with Katrine opposite them. A few anxious
+moments ensue, in which every one asks the rest if they have not
+forgotten something. The servants bring the due quantity of rugs,
+plaids, umbrellas, and opera-glasses, and the coachman is bidden to
+drive off. The hacks sadly stretch out their long, skinny legs, and
+trot laboriously after the brisk drag.
+
+In Reierstein, at the foot of a romantic ruin,--no picnic is
+conceivable without a ruin,--a _dejeuner a la fourchette_ is to be
+spread in the open air. Dinner, which has been postponed from six to
+seven, is to be taken in Erlachhof on the return of the party.
+
+Katrine is right: the day is superb, a fact of which she frequently
+reminds the possessor of the odious barometer.
+
+"Wait until evening before declaring the day fine," Rohritz rejoins,
+sententiously. "The sun's rays sting like harvest-flies: that is a bad
+sign."
+
+"Oh, you are always foreboding evil," Katrine says, with irritation.
+
+Rohritz bows, and silence ensues. Katrine looks preoccupied, wondering
+whether the mayonnaise has not been forgotten at the last moment. Stasy
+flourishes her vinaigrette languishingly, and the Baroness, who has
+been hitherto absorbed in her own reflections, suddenly arouses
+sufficiently to utter in her deepest tones an astounding observation
+upon the imperfections of creation and the superfluity of human
+existence, whereupon Rohritz agrees with her, seconding her views with
+great ability in a Schopenhauer duet in which she maintains the
+principal part. She asserts that marriage, since it is a means for the
+continuance of the human species, should be avoided by all respectable
+people, while Rohritz suggests the invention of a tremendous dynamite
+machine which shall shatter the entire globe, as a fitting problem for
+the wits of future engineers.
+
+Meanwhile, the sunbeams gleam warm and golden upon the luxuriant July
+foliage, and tremble upon the clear ripples of the trout-stream
+plashing merrily along by the roadside. In the white cups of the wild
+vines that drape with tender grace the willows and elders on the banks
+of the little stream, prismatic drops of dew are shining. The tall
+grasses wave dreamily, and at their feet peep out pink, yellow, and
+blue wild flowers, while the air is filled with the melody of birds.
+
+Our two pessimists, however, take no note whatever of these trifles.
+
+The road grows stony and steep; the hacks drag along more and more
+wearily and at last come to a stand-still. Anastasia becomes greener
+and greener of hue, and sinks back half fainting. "Ah, I feel as if I
+should die!"
+
+In hopes of lightening the carriage and of avoiding the sight of
+Fraeulein von Gurlichingen's distress, Rohritz proposes to alight and
+pursue on foot the shorter path to Reierstein, with which he is
+familiar.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+                               CRABBING.
+
+
+Meanwhile, the captain's spirited steeds have long since reached the
+appointed spot. Horses and carriage have been disposed of at the inn of
+a neighbouring village. It is an excellent hostelry, and would have
+been a very pleasant place in which to take lunch, but, since the
+delight of a picnic culminates, as is well known, in preparing hot,
+unappetizing viands at a smoky fire in the open air and in partaking of
+excellent cold dishes in the most uncomfortable position possible, the
+party immediately leave the village, and Stella, Freddy, and the two
+gentlemen, with the help of a peasant-lad hired for the purpose, drag
+out the provisions to the ruin, where the table is to be spread, in the
+shade of a romantic old oak.
+
+Directly across the meadow flows the stream, now widened to a
+considerable breadth, which had rippled at intervals by the roadside.
+
+While Leskjewitsch and the general, both resigned martyrs to picnic
+pleasure, set about collecting dry sticks for the fire, Freddy, who has
+instantly divined crabs in the brook, having first obtained his
+father's permission, pulls off his shoes and stockings and wades about
+among the stones and reeds in the water.
+
+"You look, little one, as if you wanted to go crabbing too," says the
+captain to Stella, noting the longing looks which the girl is casting
+after the boy.
+
+"Indeed I should like to," she replies, nodding gravely; "but would it
+be proper, uncle?"
+
+"Whom need you regard?--me, or that old fellow," indicating over his
+shoulder the general, "who is half blind?"
+
+Stella laughs merrily.
+
+"I certainly should not mind him; but"--she colours a little--"suppose
+the rest were to come."
+
+"Ah! you're thinking of Rohritz," says the captain. "Make your mind
+easy: if I know those steeds, it will take them one hour longer to drag
+the carriage up here, and by the time they arrive you can have caught
+thirty-six Laybrook crabs. As soon as I hear the carriage coming I will
+warn you by whistling our national hymn. So away with you to the water,
+only take care not to cut your feet."
+
+A minute or two later, Stella, without gloves, the sleeves of her gray
+linen blouse rolled up above her elbows over her shapely white arms,
+and gathering up her skirts with her left hand, while with the right
+she feels for her prey, is wading in the sun-warmed water beside
+Freddy, moving with all the attractive awkwardness of a pretty young
+girl whose feet are cautiously seeking a resting-place among the sharp
+stones, and who, although extremely eager to capture a great many
+crabs, has a decided aversion to any spot that looks green and slimy.
+
+The treacherous luck of all novices at any game is well known. Stella's
+success in her first essay at crabbing is marvellous. She goes on
+throwing more and more of the crawling, sprawling monsters into the
+basket which Freddy holds ready. Her hat prevented her from seeing
+clearly, so she has tossed it on the bank, and her hair, instead of
+being neatly knotted up, hangs in a mass of tangled gold at the back of
+her neck, nearly upon her shoulders, the sunbeams bringing out all
+sorts of glittering reflections in its coils. She is just waving a
+giant crustacean triumphantly on high, with, "Look, Freddy, did you
+ever see such a big one!" when the blood rushes to her cheeks, her
+brown eyes take on a tragic expression of dismay, and, utterly
+confused, she drops the crab and her skirts.
+
+"Am I intruding?" asks the new arrival, Rohritz, smiling as he notices
+her confusion.
+
+In her hurry to get out of the brook, she forgets to look where she is
+stepping, and suddenly an expression of pain appears in her face, and
+the water about her feet takes on a crimson tinge.
+
+"You have cut your foot," Rohritz calls, seriously distressed, helping
+her to reach the shore, where she sits down on the stump of a tree. The
+captain and the general are both out of sight, and the blood runs
+faster and faster from a considerable cut in the girl's foot. "We must
+put a stop to that," says Rohritz, with anxiety that is almost
+paternal, as he dips his handkerchief in the brook. But with a deep
+blush Stella hides her foot beneath the hem of her dress, now, alas!
+soiled and muddy. "Be reasonable," he insists, adopting a sterner tone:
+"there should be no trifling with such things. Remember my gray hair: I
+might be your father." And he kneels down, takes her foot in his hands,
+and bandages the wound carefully and skilfully. In spite of his boasted
+gray hair, however, it must be confessed that he experiences odd
+sensations during this operation, the foot is so pretty, slender, but
+not bony, soft as a rose-leaf, and so small withal that it almost fits
+into the hollow of his hand.
+
+Still more beautiful than her foot is her fair dishevelled head, so
+turned that he sees only a vague profile, just enough to show him how
+the blood has mounted to her temples, colouring cheek and neck crimson.
+
+"Thanks!" she says, in a somewhat defiant tone, drawing the foot up
+beneath her dress after he has finished bandaging it. Then, looking at
+him with a lofty, rather mistrustful air, she asks, "How old are you,
+really?"
+
+"Thirty-seven," he replies, so accustomed to her strange questions that
+they no longer surprise him.
+
+"How could you say that you might be my father? You are at least five
+years too young!" she exclaims, angrily. "And why did you appear so
+suddenly?"
+
+"I repent my intrusion with all my heart," Rohritz assures her. "The
+horses seemed so tired that I thought three people a sufficient burden
+for them, and so I alighted and came by the path across the fields."
+
+At this moment shrill and clear across the meadow from the forest
+bordering it come the notes of 'God save our Emperor!' and immediately
+afterwards is heard the slow rumble of the approaching carriage.
+
+"There, you see!" says Stella, still out of humour. "My uncle promised
+me to whistle that as soon as the carriage could be heard; but no one
+expected you on foot, and you came just twenty minutes too soon!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+                               DISASTER.
+
+
+All that the Baroness says when she hears of Stella's mishap is, "I
+cannot lose sight of you for an instant that you are not in some
+mischief!"
+
+Stella only sighs, "Poor mamma!" while Stasy, still livid as to
+complexion, finds herself strong enough to glance with great
+significance first at Stella and then at Rohritz. When she hears that
+it is Rohritz that bandaged Stella's foot she vibrates between fainting
+and a fit of laughter. She calls Rohritz nothing but 'my dear surgeon,'
+accompanying the exquisite jest with a sly glance from time to time.
+
+His enjoyment of this brilliant wit may be imagined.
+
+The general grins; the Baroness looks angry; the captain and Katrine
+are the only ones who observe nothing of Rohritz's annoyance or
+Anastasia's jest; they are entirely absorbed in reproaching each other
+for the absence of the corkscrew, which has been forgotten.
+
+Yet, in spite of the double mischance thus attending the beginning of
+the _dejeuner sur l'herbe_, all turns out pleasantly enough. The
+general remembers that his pocket-knife is provided with a corkscrew;
+the married pair recover their serenity; the crabs, in spite of
+many obstacles, are half cooked at the fire, and--for Freddy's
+sake--pronounced excellent; the cold capon and the _pate de foie gras_
+leave nothing to be desired; the mayonnaise has not been forgotten, and
+the champagne is capital.
+
+Hilarity is so fully restored that when the carriages, ordered at five
+o'clock, make their appearance, the company is singing in unison
+'Prince Eugene, that noble soldier,' to an exhilarating accompaniment
+played by the general with the back of a knife on a plate.
+
+Baron Rohritz, who is not familiar with 'Prince Eugene,' and who
+consequently listens in silence to that inspiring song, glances
+critically at a small point of purple cloud creeping up from behind the
+mountains.
+
+"My barometer----" he begins; but Katrine interrupts him irritably:
+"Ah, do spare us with your barometer!"
+
+A foreign element suddenly mingles with the merry talk. A loud blast of
+wind howls through the mighty branches of the old oak, tearing away a
+handful of leaves to toss them as in scorn in the dismayed faces of the
+party; a tall champagne-bottle falls over, and breaks two glasses.
+
+"It is late; we have far to go, and the hacks are scarcely
+trustworthy," the captain remarks. "I think we had better begin to pack
+up."
+
+Preparations to return are made hurriedly. The general begs for a place
+in the landau, as his backbone is sorely in need of some support, and
+Freddy also, who is apt to catch cold, is taken into the carriage from
+the open conveyance.
+
+No one expresses any anxiety with regard to Stella; she slips into her
+brown water-proof and is helped up upon the box of the drag, where the
+captain takes his place beside her, while Rohritz gets into the seat
+behind them. They set off. Once more the sun breaks forth from among
+the rapidly-darkening masses of clouds, but the air is heavy and in the
+distance there is a faint mutter of thunder.
+
+Wonderful to relate, the hired steeds follow the sorrels with the most
+praiseworthy rapidity, due perhaps to the fact that the coachman makes
+the whip whistle uninterruptedly about their long ears. Katrine, who is
+sitting with her back to the horses, sees nothing of this, but rejoices
+to find the pace of the hacks so much improved. Suddenly Stasy in a
+panic exclaims, "Katrine!"
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"The driver--oh, look----"
+
+Frau von Leskjewitsch turns, and sees the fat driver from the village
+swaying to and fro on his seat like a pendulum. The carriage bumps
+against a stone, the ladies scream, Freddy, who had fallen asleep
+between the Baroness and Anastasia, wakens and asks in a piteous voice
+what is the matter; the general springs up, tries to take the reins
+from the driver, and roars as loud as his old lungs will permit,
+"Leskjewitsch!"
+
+The captain does not hear.
+
+"Papa!" "Jack!" "Captain!" echo loud and shrill, until the captain,
+told by Rohritz to turn and look, gives the reins to his old comrade,
+jumps down from the drag, and runs to the assistance of his family. An
+angry scene ensues between him and the driver, who tries to withhold
+from him the reins,--is first violent, then maudlin, stammering in his
+peasant-patois asseverations of his entire sobriety, until the captain
+actually drags him down from the box and with a volley of abuse flings
+him into a ditch. Katrine is attacked by a cramp in the jaw from
+excitement. The Baroness ponders upon the etymological derivation of a
+word in the patois of the country which she has fished out of the
+captain's torrent of invective, and repeats it to herself in an
+undertone. The general folds his hands over his stomach with
+resignation, and sighs, "Dinner is ordered for seven o'clock." Freddy's
+blue eyes sparkle merrily in the general confusion, and Stasy, since
+there is positively no audience for her affectation, conducts herself
+in a perfectly sensible manner. In the midst of the excitement, one of
+the hacks deliberately lies down, and thus diverts the captain's
+attention from the driver.
+
+"By Jove, our case is bad,--worse than might be supposed. These screws
+can scarcely stir," he exclaims: "that drunken scoundrel has beaten
+them half to death. How we are to get home God knows: these brutes
+cannot possibly drag this four-seated Noah's ark. We had better change
+horses. Ho! Rohritz?"
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Unharness those horses!"
+
+In a short time the exchange is effected. The sorrels in their gay
+trappings are harnessed to the heavy landau, the long-legged hacks to
+the drag.
+
+It is beginning to rain, and to grow dark.
+
+Freddy is nearly smothered in plaids by his anxious mamma. The captain
+mounts on the box of the four-seated vehicle, and calls to Rohritz,--
+
+"Drive to Wolfsegg, the village across the ferry. We will await you
+with fresh horses, at the inn there. Adieu."
+
+And the captain gives his steeds the rein, and trots gaily past the
+drag.
+
+"_Tiens!_ Stella is left _tete-a-tete_ with Rohritz," Stasy whispers.
+
+"And what of that?" Katrine says, rather crossly. "He will not kill
+her."
+
+"No, no; but people might talk."
+
+"Pshaw! because of an hour's drive!"
+
+"Wait and see how punctual they are," Stasy giggles maliciously.
+
+"Anastasia, you are outrageous!" Katrine declares.
+
+"Wait and see," Anastasia repeats; "wait and see."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                                IDYLLIC.
+
+
+"Are you well protected, Fraeulein Stella?" Rohritz asks his young
+companion, after a long silence.
+
+"Oh, yes," says Stella, contentedly wrapping herself in her shabby,
+thin, twenty-franc water-proof and pulling the hood over her fair head,
+"I am quite warm. It was a good thing that you gave us warning, or I
+should certainly have left my water-proof at home."
+
+"You see an 'old bore,' as Les called my barometer, can be of use under
+certain circumstances."
+
+"Indeed it can," Stella nods assent; "but it would have been a pity to
+give up the picnic at the bidding of your weather-prophet, for, on the
+whole, it was a great success."
+
+"Are you serious?" Rohritz asks, surprised.
+
+"Why should you doubt it?"
+
+"Why, you have had less cause than any of us to enjoy the day. You have
+cut your foot, have spoiled a very pretty gown, and are in danger, if
+it goes on pouring thus, of being wet to the skin in spite of your
+water-proof."
+
+"That is of no consequence," she declares from out the brown hood, her
+fair dripping face laughing up at him through the rain and the
+gathering darkness. "Where is the harm in getting a little wet? It is
+quite delightful."
+
+He is silent. She is to be envied for her gay, happy temperament, and
+she looks wonderfully pretty in spite of her grotesque wrap.
+
+Not the faintest breath of wind diverts from the perpendicular the
+downfall of rain. The road leads between two steep wooded heights,
+whence are wafted woodland odours both sweet and acrid. Intense
+peace--an unspeakably beneficent repose--reigns around; in grave
+harmonious accord blend the rushing of the brook, the falling of the
+rain, and the low whisper and murmur of the dripping leaves, informing
+the silence with a sense of enjoyment.
+
+"How beautiful! how wonderfully beautiful!" Stella exclaims; her soft
+voice has a strange power to touch the heart, and in its gayest tones
+there always trembles something like suppressed tears.
+
+"Yes, it is beautiful," Rohritz admits, "but"--with a glance of
+mistrust at the wretched hacks--"when we shall reach Wolfsegg heaven
+alone knows!"
+
+Is he so very anxious to reach Wolfsegg? To be frank, no! He feels
+unreasonably comfortable in this rain-drenched solitude, beside
+this pretty fair-haired child; he cannot help rejoicing in this
+_tete-a-tete_. Since the day when Stella thanked him with perhaps
+exaggerated warmth for returning her locket, she has never seemed so
+much at her ease with him as now.
+
+The desire assails him to probe her pure innocent nature without her
+knowledge,--to learn something of her short past, of her true self.
+
+Meanwhile, he repeats, "But it is beautiful,--wonderfully beautiful!"
+
+The wretched horses drag along more and more laboriously. Rohritz has
+much ado to prevent their drooping their gray noses to the ground to
+crop the dripping grass that clothes each side of the road in emerald
+luxuriance.
+
+"Delightful task, the driving of these lame hacks!" he exclaims. "I can
+imagine only one pleasure equal to it,--waltzing with a lame partner.
+This last I know, of course, only from hearsay."
+
+"Did you never dance?" asks Stella.
+
+"No, never since I left the Academy. Have you been to many balls?"
+
+"Never but to one, in Venice, at the Princess Giovanelli's," Stella
+replies. "After the first waltz I became so ill that I would not run
+the risk of fainting and making myself and my partner ridiculous. My
+enjoyment then consisted in sitting for half an hour between two old
+ladies on a sofa, and eating an ice to restore me. At twelve o'clock
+punctually I hurried back, moreover, to the Britannia, for I knew that
+my poor sick father would sit up to be regaled with an account of my
+conquests. He was firmly convinced that I should make conquests. Poor
+papa! You must not laugh at his delusion! The next day the other girls
+in the hotel pitied me for not having had any partner for the cotillon;
+they displayed their bouquets to me, as the Indians after a battle show
+the scalps they have taken. They told me of their adorers, and of the
+_passions funestes_ which they had inspired, and asked me what I had
+achieved in that direction. And I could only cast down my eyes, and
+reply, 'Nothing.' And to think that to-day, after all these years, I
+must give the same answer to the same question,--'Nothing!'"
+
+"You have never danced, then!" Rohritz says, thoughtfully.
+
+Strange, how this fact attracts him. Stella seems to him like a fruit
+not quite ripened by the sun, but gleaming among cool, overshadowing
+foliage in absolute, untouched freshness. Such dewy-fresh fruit is
+wonderfully inviting; he feels almost like stretching out his hand for
+it. But no, it would be folly,--ridiculous; he is an old man, she a
+child; it is impossible. And yet----
+
+Both are so absorbed in their thoughts that they do not observe how
+very dark it has grown, how threatening is the aspect of the skies.
+Leaving the ravine, the road now leads along the bank of the Save. The
+pools on each side grow deeper, the mud splashes from the wheels on
+Stella's knees: she does not notice it.
+
+"Your last remark was a little bold," Rohritz now says, bending towards
+her.
+
+"Bold?" Stella repeats, in dismay: 'bold,' for her, means pert,
+aggressive,--in short, something terrible.
+
+"Yes," he continues, smiling at her agitation; "you asserted something
+that seems to me incredible,--that you never have inspired any one with
+a----"
+
+He hesitates.
+
+A brilliant flash quivers in the sky; by its light they see the Save
+foaming along in its narrow bed, swollen to overflowing by the recent
+torrents of rain. Then all is dark as night; a loud peal of thunder
+shakes the air, and the blast of the storm comes hissing as if with
+repressed fury from the mountains.
+
+The horses tremble, one of them stumbles and falls, the traces break,
+and down goes the carriage.
+
+"Now we are done for!" Rohritz exclaims, as he jumps down to
+investigate the extent of the damage.
+
+Further progress is out of the question. He succeeds by a violent
+effort in dragging to his feet the exhausted horse, then unharnesses
+both animals and ties them as well as he can to a picket-fence, the
+accident having occurred close to an isolated cottage with an adjacent
+garden. Rohritz knocks at its doors and windows in vain; no one
+appears. In the deep recess of one of the doors is a step affording a
+tolerable seat. He spreads a plaid over it, and then, going to Stella,
+he says, "Allow me to lift you down; I must drag the carriage aside
+from the road. There! you are not quite sheltered yet from the rain;
+move a little farther into the corner,--so."
+
+"Oh, I don't in the least mind getting wet," Stella assures him; "but
+what shall we do? We cannot sit here all night long in hopes that some
+chance passers-by may fish us out of the wet."
+
+"If you could walk, there would be no difficulty. The inn this side of
+the ferry is only a quarter of a mile off, and we could easily hire a
+couple of horses there. Can you stand on your foot?"
+
+"It gives me a great deal of pain to stand, and, since Uncle Jack has
+my other shoe in his pocket, how am I to walk?"
+
+"That is indeed unfortunate."
+
+"You had better go for help to the inn of which you speak," Stella
+proposes.
+
+"Then I should have to leave you here alone," says Rohritz, shaking his
+head.
+
+"I am not afraid," she declares, with the hardihood of utter
+inexperience.
+
+"But I am afraid for you; I cannot endure the thought of leaving you
+here alone on Sunday, when all the men about are intoxicated. One of
+the roughest of them might chance to pass by."
+
+"In all probability no one will pass," says Stella. "Go as quickly as
+you can, that we may get away from here."
+
+"In fact, she is right," Edgar says to himself. He turns to go, then
+returns once more, and, taking his mackintosh from his shoulders, wraps
+it about her.
+
+He is gone. How slowly time passes when one is waiting in the dark!
+With monotonous force, in a kind of grand rhythmical cadence the rain
+pours down to the accompaniment of the swirling Save. No other sound is
+to be heard. Stella looks round at the horses, which she can dimly
+discern. One is lying, all four legs stretched out, in the mud, in the
+position in which artists are wont to portray horses killed on a
+battle-field; the other is nibbling with apparent relish at some
+greenery that has grown across the garden fence. From time to time a
+flash of lightning illumines the darkness. Stella takes out her watch
+to note the time by one of these momentary illuminations. It must have
+stopped,--no, it is actually only a quarter of an hour since Edgar's
+departure.
+
+Hark! the rolling of wheels mingles with the rush of the Save and the
+plash of the rain. The sound of a human voice falls upon the girl's
+ear. She listens, delighted. Is it Rohritz? No, that is not his voice:
+there are several voices, suspiciously rough, peasants rolling past in
+a small basket-wagon, trolling some monotonous Slav melody. By a red
+flash of lightning the rude company is revealed, the driver mercilessly
+plying his whip upon the back of a very small horse, that is galloping
+through the mire with distended nostrils and fluttering mane.
+
+Stella's heart beats, her boasted courage shrivels up to nothing. A few
+more minutes pass, and now she hears steps. Is he coming? No; the steps
+approach from the opposite direction, stumbling, dragging steps,--those
+of a drunkard.
+
+A nameless, unreasoning dread takes possession of her. Ah! she hears
+the quick firm rhythm of an elastic tread.
+
+"Baron Rohritz!" she screams, as loud as she can. "Baron Rohritz!"
+
+The step quickens into a run, and a moment later Rohritz is beside her.
+"For God's sake, what is the matter?" he says, much distressed.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing,--only a drunken man. My courage oozed away
+pitifully. Heaven knows whether, if you had not appeared, I might not
+have plunged into the Save from sheer cowardice. But all is well now.
+Is a vehicle coming?"
+
+"Unfortunately, there was none to be had. I could only get a
+peasant-lad to take care of the horses. If there was the slightest
+dependence to be placed upon these confounded brutes I could put you on
+the least broken-down of them and lead him slowly to the inn. But,
+unfortunately, I am convinced that the beast could not carry you: he
+would fall with you in the first pool in the road. With all the desire
+in the world to help you, I cannot. You must try to walk as far as the
+inn. I have brought you one of the ferryman's wife's shoes."
+
+And while Stella is putting the huge patent-leather shoe on her
+bandaged foot, Rohritz directs the peasant-lad to fish his plaid and
+rugs out of the mud and to lead the horses slowly to the inn. As he
+walks away with Stella they hear the boy's loud drawling 'Hey!' 'Get
+up,' with which he seeks to inspirit the miserable brutes.
+
+Leaning on the arm of her escort, Stella does her best to proceed
+without yielding to the pain which every minute increases, but her
+movements grow slower and more laboured, and finally a low moan escapes
+her lips.
+
+"Let me rest just one moment," she entreats, piteously, ashamed of a
+helplessness of which a normally constituted woman would have made
+capital.
+
+"Do not walk any farther," he rejoins, and, bending over her, he says,
+with decision, "I pray you put your right arm around my neck, clasp it
+well: treat me absolutely as a _porte-faix_."
+
+"But, Baron----"
+
+"Do not oppose me, I entreat: at present _I_ am in command." His tone
+is very kind, but also very authoritative.
+
+She obeys, half mechanically. He carries her firmly and securely,
+without stumbling, without betraying the slightest fatigue. At first
+her sensations are distressing; then slowly, gradually, a pleasant
+sense of being shielded and cared for overcomes her: her thoughts stray
+far, far into the past,--back to the time when her father hid her
+against his breast beneath his cavalry cloak, and she looked out
+between its folds from the warm darkness upon the world outside. The
+minutes fly.
+
+"We are here!" Rohritz says, very hoarsely.
+
+She looks up. A reddish light is streaming out into the darkness from
+the windows of a low, clumsy building. He puts her down on the
+threshold of the inn.
+
+"Thanks!" she murmurs, without looking at him. He is silent.
+
+The inn parlour is empty. A bright fire is burning in the huge tiled
+stove; the fragrance of cedar-berries slowly scorching on its ledge
+neutralizes in part the odour of old cheese, beer, and cheap tobacco
+plainly to be perceived in spite of the open window. In a broad cabinet
+with glazed doors are to be seen among various monstrosities of glass
+and porcelain two battered sugar ships with paper pennons, and a bridal
+wreath with crumpled white muslin blossoms and arsenic-green leaves.
+The portraits of their Majesties, very youthful in appearance, dating
+from their coronation, hang on each side of this piece of furniture.
+
+Among the various tables covered with black oil-cloth there is one of
+rustic neatness provided with a red-flowered cover, and set with
+greenish glasses, blue-rimmed plates, and iron knives and forks with
+wooden handles.
+
+The hostess, a colossal dame, who looks like a meal-sack with a string
+tied around its middle, makes her appearance, to receive the
+unfortunates and to place her entire wardrobe at Stella's disposal.
+
+"Can we not go on, then?" Stella asks, in dismay.
+
+"Unfortunately, no. I have sent to the nearest village for some sort of
+conveyance, and my messenger cannot possibly return in less than an
+hour. And I must prepare you for another unfortunate circumstance: we
+shall be forced to go by a very long and roundabout road; the Groeblach
+bridge is carried away, and the Save is whirling along in its current
+the pillars and ruins, making the ferry impracticable for the present."
+
+"Oh, good heavens!" sighs Stella, who has meanwhile taken off her
+dripping water-proof and wrapped about her shoulders a thick red shawl
+loaned her by the hostess. "Well, at least we are under shelter."
+
+Thereupon the hostess brings in a grass-green waiter on which are
+placed a dish of ham and eggs and a can of beer.
+
+"I ordered a little supper, but I cannot vouch for the excellence of
+the viands," Rohritz says, in French, to Stella. "I should be glad if
+you would consent to eat something warm. It is the best preventive
+against cold."
+
+Stella shows no disposition to criticise what is thus set before her.
+"How pleasant!" she exclaims, gaily, taking her seat at the table. "I
+am terribly hungry, and I had not ventured to hope for anything to eat
+before midnight."
+
+It is a pleasure to him to sit opposite to her, looking at her pretty,
+cheerful face,--a pleasure to laugh at her gay sallies.
+
+Would it not be charming to sit opposite to her thus daily at his own
+table,--to lavish care and tenderness upon the poor child who had been
+so neglected and thrust out into the world,--to spoil and pet her to
+his heart's content? "Grasp your chance,--grasp it!" the heart in his
+bosom cries out: "her lot is hard, she is grateful for a little
+sympathy, will she not smile on you in spite of your gray hair?" But
+reason admonishes: "Forbear! she is only a child. To be sure, if, as
+she has avowed, her heart be really untouched, why then----"
+
+Whilst he, absorbed in such careful musings, grows more and more
+taciturn, she chatters away gaily upon every conceivable topic,
+devouring with an appetite to be envied the frugal refection he has
+provided.
+
+"It is delightful, our improvised supper," she declares, "almost as
+charming as the little suppers at the Britannia which papa used to have
+ready for me when I came home from parties in Venice, as terribly
+hungry as one always is on returning from a Venetian soiree, where one
+is delightfully entertained but gets nothing to eat."
+
+"It seems, then, that the Giovanelli ball was not your only glimpse of
+Venetian society?" Rohritz remarks, with a glance that is well-nigh
+indiscreetly searching.
+
+"Before papa grew so much worse I very often went out: papa insisted
+upon it. The Countess L---- chaperoned me. And at Lady Stair's evenings
+in especial I enjoyed myself almost as much as I was bored at the
+Giovanelli ball. I cannot, 'tis true, dance; but talk,"--she laughs
+somewhat shyly, as if in ridicule of her talkativeness,--"I _can_
+talk."
+
+"That there is nothing to eat at a Venetian soiree I know from
+experience," Rohritz says, rather ill-humouredly, "but how one can find
+any enjoyment there I am absolutely unable to understand. Venetian
+society is terrible: the men especially are intolerable."
+
+"I did not find it so," Stella declares, shaking her head with her
+usual grave simplicity in asserting her opinion; "not at all."
+
+"But you must confess that Italians are usually low-toned; that----"
+
+"But I did not meet Italians exclusively; I met Austrians, English,
+Russians; although in fact"--she pauses reflectively, then says, with
+conviction--"the nicest of all, my very particular friend, was an
+Italian, Prince Zino Capito."
+
+"He calls himself an Austrian," Rohritz interposes.
+
+"He was born in Rome," Stella rejoins.
+
+"I see you know all about him," Rohritz observes.
+
+"We saw a great deal of each other," Stella chatters on easily. "We
+were in the same hotel, papa and I, and the Prince. His place at table
+was next to mine, and in fine weather he used to take us to sail in his
+cutter. He often came in the evenings to play bezique with papa. He was
+very kind to papa."
+
+"Evidently," Rohritz observes.
+
+"You seem to dislike him!" Stella says, in some surprise.
+
+"Not at all. We always got along very well together," Rohritz coldly
+assures her. "I know him intimately; my oldest brother married his
+sister Therese."
+
+"Ah! is she as handsome as he?" Stella asks, innocently.
+
+"Very graceful and distinguished in appearance; she does not resemble
+him at all." And with a growing sharpness in his tone Rohritz adds,--
+
+"Do you think him so very handsome?"
+
+The hostess interrupts them by bringing in a dish of inviting
+strawberries. Stella thanks her kindly for her excellent supper, the
+woman says something to Rohritz in the peasant patois, which Stella
+does not understand, and he fastens his eye-glass in his eye, a sign
+with him of a momentary access of ill humour.
+
+After the woman has withdrawn he remarks, with an odd twinkle of his
+eyes, "How many years too young did you say I was, Baroness Stella, to
+be your father? four or five, was it not? _Eh bien_, our hostess thinks
+differently: she has just congratulated me upon my charming daughter."
+
+But Stella has no time to make reply: her eyes are riveted in horror
+upon the clock against the wall. "Is it really half-past ten?" she
+exclaims. "No, thank heaven; the clock has stopped. What o'clock is it,
+Baron Rohritz?"
+
+"A quarter after eleven," he says, startled himself, and rather
+uncomfortable. "I do not understand why the messenger is not here with
+the conveyance."
+
+"Good heavens!" Stella cries, in utter dismay. "What will mamma say?"
+
+"Be reasonable. Your mother cannot blame you in this case; she must be
+informed that it was impossible to cross the ferry," he says, anxious
+himself about the matter, however.
+
+"Certainly; but while she does not know of our break-down she will
+think we have had plenty of time to reach Wolfsegg by the longest way
+round. You certainly acted for the best, but it would have been better,
+much better, if Uncle Jack had stayed with me. He knows all about the
+country, and he has a decided way of making these lazy peasants do as
+he pleases."
+
+"I do not believe that with all his knowledge of the country, and his
+decision of character, he could have succeeded in procuring you a
+conveyance," Rohritz says, with growing irritation.
+
+"If the ferry is useless, perhaps we might cross in a skiff," Stella
+says, almost in tears.
+
+"I will see what is to be done," he rejoins. "At all events it shall
+not be my fault if your mother's anxiety is not fully appeased in the
+course of the next half-hour."
+
+With this he leaves the room. Shortly afterwards the hostess makes her
+appearance.
+
+"Where has the Herr Papa gone?" she asks.
+
+"He has gone out to see if we cannot cross the Save in a boat."
+
+"He cannot do it to-night," the woman asserts. "He would surely not
+think of----" Without finishing her sentence she puts down the plate of
+cheese she has just brought, and hurries away.
+
+Stella is perplexed. What does he mean to do? What is the hostess so
+foolishly afraid of? She limps to the open window, and sees Rohritz on
+the bank of the stream, talking in the Slavonic dialect, which she does
+not understand, with a rough-looking man. The rain has ceased, the
+clouds are rent and flying, and from among them the moon shines with a
+bluish lustre, strewing silver gleams upon the quiet road with its
+net-work of pools and ruts, upon the wildly-rushing Save with its
+foaming billows, upon the black roof of the hut which serves as a
+shelter for the ferrymen, and upon a rocking skiff which is fastened to
+the shore. A sudden dread seizes upon Stella, a dread stronger by far
+than her childish fear of her mother's harsh words. The hostess enters.
+
+"Not a bit will the gentleman heed,--stiff-necked he is, the water
+boiling, and not a man will risk the rowing him: he be's to sail alone
+to Wolfsegg, and ne'er a one can hinder him."
+
+Stella sees Rohritz get into the skiff, sees the fisherman take hold of
+the chain that fastens it to the shore. Not even conscious of the pain
+in her wounded foot, she rushes out, and across the muddy road to the
+bank, where the fisherman has already unfastened the chain and is
+preparing to push the boat out of the swamp into the rushing current.
+
+"Good heavens! are you mad?" she calls aloud to Rohritz. "What are you
+about?"
+
+Rohritz turns hastily; their eyes meet in the moonlight. "After what
+you said to me there is nothing for me to do save to shield your
+reputation at all hazards.--Push off!" he orders the fisherman.
+
+"No," she calls: "it never occurred to me to consider my reputation. I
+was only a coward, and afraid of mamma."
+
+The fisherman hesitates. Rohritz takes the oars. "Push off!" he orders,
+angrily.
+
+"Do so, if you choose," Stella cries, "but you will take me with you!"
+Whereupon she jumps into the boat, and, striking her poor wounded foot
+against a seat, utterly breaks down with the pain. "I was a coward;
+yes, yes, I was afraid of mamma; but I would rather have her refuse to
+speak to me than have you drowned," she sobs.
+
+Her streaming eyes are riveted in great distress upon his face, and her
+soft, trembling hands try to clasp his arm. About the skiff the waves
+plash, "Grasp it, grasp it; your happiness lies at your feet!"
+
+His whole frame is thrilled. He stoops and lifts her up. "But, Stella,
+my poor foolish angel----" he begins.
+
+At this moment there is a rattle of wheels, and then the captain's
+voice: "Rohritz! Rohritz!"
+
+"All's right now!" says Rohritz, drawing a deep breath.
+
+As it now appears, the captain has come by the long roundabout road,
+with a borrowed vehicle, to the relief of the unfortunates. The
+general, who, whatever disagreeable qualities he may possess, is a
+'gentleman coachman' of renown, has declared himself quite ready to
+conduct the landau with its spirited span of horses to Erlach Court.
+
+"What have you been about? What has happened to you?" the captain
+repeats, and he shakes his head, claps his hands, and laughs by turns,
+as with mutual interruptions and explanations the tale of disaster is
+unfolded to him.
+
+Then Stella is packed inside the little vehicle, Rohritz takes his
+place beside her, and the captain is squeezed up on the front seat.
+
+Before fifteen minutes are over Stella is sound asleep. Rohritz wraps
+his plaid about her shoulders without her knowledge.
+
+"She is tired out," he whispers. "I only hope her foot is not going to
+give her trouble. Were you very anxious?"
+
+"My wife was almost beside herself. My sister took the matter, on the
+contrary, very quietly, until finally Stasy put some ridiculous ideas
+of impropriety into her head, and then she talked nonsense, alternately
+scolding you and the child, marching up and down the common room at the
+Wolfsegg inn like a bear in a cage, until I could bear it no longer,
+but left the entire party on the general's shoulders to be driven home,
+and set out in search of you. How did Stella behave herself? Did she
+give you any trouble?"
+
+"No; she was very quiet."
+
+"She is a dear girl, is she not? Poor child! she really has had too
+much to bear. Of course I would not confess it to Stasy, but it is a
+fact that if any other man had been in your place I should have been
+excessively annoyed."
+
+"My gray hair has been of immense advantage to your niece," Rohritz
+assured him. "The hostess at the ferry persisted in taking me for her
+father."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Nonsense which at least showed me at the right moment precisely where
+I stood," Rohritz murmured. "And, between ourselves,--never allude to
+it again,--it was necessary."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The captain, who naturally enough sees nothing in his friend's words
+but an allusion to his altered circumstances, sighs, and thinks, "What
+a pity!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                              A DEPARTURE.
+
+
+When the three wanderers arrive, at Erlach Court a little after
+midnight, they find the rest in the dining-room, still sitting around
+the remains of a very much over-cooked dinner. Stasy, in a pink
+peignoir, hails Rohritz upon his entrance with, "I have won my
+bet,--six pair of Jouvin's gloves from Katrine. I wagered you would be
+late--ha! ha!"
+
+"A fact easy to foresee, in view of the condition of the horses and the
+roads," Rohritz rejoins, frowning.
+
+The affair, so far as it concerns Stella, who approaches her mother
+with fear and trembling, turns out fairly well. As the Baroness's
+natural feeling of maternal anxiety for her daughter's safety has only
+been temporarily disturbed by Stasy's insinuations, she forgets to
+scold Stella, in her joy at seeing her safe and sound. That she may not
+give way to an outburst of anger upon further consideration, and that
+an end may be put to Stasy's jests, the captain instantly plunges into
+a detailed account of all the mishaps that have befallen Stella and her
+escort.
+
+Katrine meanwhile searches for a telegram that has arrived for Rohritz,
+finally discovering it under an old-fashioned decanter on the
+sideboard.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asks, kindly, seeing him change colour upon
+reading it.
+
+
+"Moritz, an apoplectic stroke, come immediately.
+
+                                          Ernestine."
+
+
+he reads aloud. "'Tis from my eldest sister. Poor Tina!" he murmurs. "I
+must leave to-morrow by the seven-o'clock train from Gradenik. Can you
+let me have a pair of horses, Les?"
+
+The captain sends instantly to have everything in readiness.
+
+Shortly afterwards Rohritz takes leave of the ladies; he does not, of
+course, venture to expect that after the fatigues of the day they will
+rise before six in the morning for his sake. Stella's hand he retains a
+few seconds longer than he ought, and he notices that it trembles in
+his own.
+
+So summary is his mode of preparation that his belongings are all
+packed in little more than half an hour, and he then disposes himself
+to spend the rest of the night in refreshing slumber. But sleep is
+denied him: a strange unrest possesses him. Happiness knocks at the
+door of his heart and entreats, 'Ah, let me in, let me in!' But Reason
+stands sentinel there and refuses to admit her.
+
+He tossed to and fro for hours, unable to compose himself. Towards
+morning he had a strange dream. He seemed to be walking in a lovely
+summer night: the moon shone bright through the branches of an old
+linden, and lay in arabesque patterns of light on the dark ground
+beneath. Suddenly he perceived a small dark object lying at his feet,
+and when he stooped to see what it was he found it was a little bird
+that had fallen out of the nest and now looked up at him sadly and
+helplessly from large dark eyes. He picked it up and warmed it against
+his breast. It nestled delightedly into his hand. He pressed his lips
+to the warm little head; an electric thrill shot through his veins.
+"Stella, my poor, dear, foolish child!" he murmured.
+
+Rat-tat-tat--rat-tat-tat! He started and awoke. The servant was
+knocking at his door to arouse him. "The Herr Baron's hot
+shaving-water."
+
+When, half an hour later, he appears, dressed with his usual fastidious
+care, in the dining-room, he finds both the master and the mistress of
+the house already there to do the honours of what he calls, with
+courteous exaggeration, 'the last meal of the condemned.' Shortly
+afterwards Stasy appears. The general, through a servant, makes a
+back-ache a plea for not rising at so early an hour.
+
+The carriage is announced; Rohritz kisses Katrine's hand and thanks her
+for some delightful weeks. She and the captain accompany him to the
+carriage, while Stasy contents herself with kissing her hand to him
+from the terrace. At the last moment Rohritz discovers that he has no
+matches, and a servant is sent into the house to get him some.
+
+"It is settled between us, now," Katrine begins, "that whenever you are
+fairly tired out with mankind in general----"
+
+"I shall come to Erlach Court to learn to prize it in particular; most
+certainly, madame," Rohritz replies, his glance roving restlessly among
+the upper windows of the castle. "_Au revoir_ at Christmas!"
+
+The morning is cool; the cloudless skies are pale blue, the turf silver
+gray with dew; the carriage makes deep ruts in the moist gravel of the
+sweep; the blossoms have fallen from the linden and are lying by
+thousands shrivelled and faded at its feet, while the rustle of the
+dripping dew among its mighty branches can be distinctly heard.
+
+The servant brings the matches. Rohritz still lingers.
+
+"Do not forget, madame, to bid the Baroness Meineck----" he begins,
+when the sound of a limping foot-fall strikes his ear. He turns
+hastily: it is Stella,--Stella in a white morning gown, her hair
+loosely twisted up, very pale, very charming, her eyes gazing large and
+grave from out her mobile countenance.
+
+"Have you, too, made your appearance at last, you lazy little person?
+'Tis very good of you, highly praiseworthy," the captain says, with a
+laugh to annul the effect of Stella's innocent eagerness.
+
+A burst of laughter comes from the terrace.
+
+"I hope you are duly gratified, Baron," a discordant voice calls out.
+"When our little girl gets up at six o'clock it must be for a very
+grand occasion!"
+
+Blushing painfully, Stella with difficulty restrains her tears; she
+says not a word, but stands there absolutely paralyzed with
+embarrassment.
+
+"I thank you from my heart for your kindness," Rohritz says, hastily
+approaching her. "I should have regretted infinitely not seeing you to
+say good-bye."
+
+"You had a great deal of trouble with me yesterday, and were very
+patient," she manages to stammer. "Except Uncle Jack, no one has been
+so kind to me as you, since papa died, and I wanted to thank you for
+it."
+
+He takes her soft, warm little hand in his and carries it to his lips.
+
+"God guard you!" he murmurs.
+
+"Hurry, or you will be too late!" the captain calls to him. He is going
+to accompany him to the station, and he fairly drags him away to the
+carriage.
+
+The driver cracks his whip, the horses start off, Rohritz waves his hat
+for a last farewell, and the carriage vanishes behind the iron gates of
+the park.
+
+"Poor Stella! poor Stella!" Stasy screams from the terrace, fairly
+convulsed with laughter. "Delightful fellow, Rohritz: he knows what
+he's about!"
+
+But Stella covers her burning face with her hands. "I will go into a
+convent," she says; "there at least I shall be able to conduct myself
+properly."
+
+Meanwhile, Rohritz and the captain roll on towards the station. They
+are both silent.
+
+"He is desperately in love with her," thinks the captain. "Is he really
+too poor to marry, I wonder?"
+
+Yes, it is true Rohritz is desperately in love with her; she hovers
+before his eyes in all her loveliness like a vision. He would fain
+stretch out his arms to her, but he is perpetually tormented by the
+persistent question, "Whom does she resemble?" Suddenly he knows. The
+knowledge almost paralyzes him!
+
+Beside the pure, fresh vision of Stella he sees leaning over a
+black-haired, vagabond-looking man at the roulette-table at Baden-Baden
+the hectic ruin of a woman who has been magnificently beautiful, a
+woman with painted cheeks and with deep lines about her eyes and
+mouth,--otherwise the very image of Stella.
+
+Twelve years since he had seen her thus, and upon asking who she was
+had been told that she was the mistress of the Spanish violinist
+Correze, and that she was little by little sacrificing her entire
+fortune to gratify the artist's love of gaming. His informant added
+that she was a woman of birth and position, and that she had left her
+husband and child in obedience to the promptings of passion. He did not
+know her husband's name: she called herself then Madame Correze.
+
+Why do all Stasy's malicious remarks about Stella's unpleasant
+connections, and about the Meineck temperament, crowd into his mind?
+
+There is no denying that Stella is lacking in a certain kind of
+reserve.
+
+While he is waiting with the captain beneath the vine-wreathed shed of
+the station for the train which has just been signalled, these hateful
+thoughts refuse to be banished. He suddenly asks his friend, who stands
+smoking; in silence beside him,--
+
+"What is the story about your sister's sister-in-law to which Fraeulein
+von Gurlichingen so often alludes? Was she the same Eugenie Meineck to
+whom you were once devoted?"
+
+"Yes," the captain makes reply, half closing his eyes, "and she was a
+charming, enchanting creature; Stella reminds me of her. No one has a
+good word for her now, but there was a time when it was impossible to
+pet and praise her enough."
+
+"What became of her?"
+
+"She fell into bad--or rather into incapable--hands. She married an
+elderly man who did not know how to manage her. Good heavens! the best
+horse stumbles under a bad rider, and----"
+
+"Well, and----?"
+
+"She had not been married long when she ran off with a Spanish
+musician, a coarse fellow, who beat her, and ran through her property.
+He was quite famous. His name was--was----" The captain snaps his
+fingers impatiently.
+
+"Correze?" Rohritz interposes.
+
+"Yes, that is it,--Correze!"
+
+At this moment the train arrives.
+
+"All kind messages to the ladies at Erlach Court, and many thanks for
+your hospitality, Jack!" Rohritz says, jumping into the coupe.
+
+"I hope we shall see you soon again, old fellow; but--hm!--have you no
+message for my foolish little Stella?" asks the captain.
+
+"I hope with all my heart that she may soon fall into good hands!"
+Rohritz says, with emphasis, in a hard vibrant voice.
+
+And the train whizzes away.
+
+"The deuce!" thinks the captain; "there's but a slim chance for the
+poor girl. Good heavens! if I loved Stella and my circumstances did not
+allow of my marrying, I'd take up some profession. But Rohritz is too
+fine a gentleman for that."
+
+Meanwhile, Rohritz leans back discontentedly in the corner of an empty
+coupe.
+
+"A charming, bewitching creature,--Stella resembles her," he murmurs to
+himself. "She married an elderly man from pique, and so on." He lights
+a cigar and puffs forth thick clouds of smoke. "She might not have
+married me from pique, but from loneliness, from gratitude for a little
+sympathy. And if Zino had come across her later on---- I was on the
+point of losing my head. Thank God it is over!"
+
+He sat still for a while, his head propped upon his hand, and then
+found that his cigar had gone out. With an impatient gesture he tossed
+it out of the window.
+
+"I could not have believed I should have had such an attack at my
+years," he muttered. He set his teeth, and his face took on a resolute
+expression. "It must he," he said to himself.
+
+Outside the wind sighed among the trees and in the tall meadow-grass.
+
+It sounded to him like the sobbing of his rejected happiness.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+                               SCATTERED.
+
+
+Summer has gone. The birds are silent; brown leaves cover the green
+grass, falling thicker and thicker from the weary trees; long, white
+gossamers float in the damp, oppressive air: the autumn is weaving a
+shroud for the dying year.
+
+Scared by the whistling blasts and the floods of rain, the swallows
+have assembled in dark flocks; they are seen in long rows on the
+telegraph-wires in eager twittering discussion of their approaching
+flight, and then, the next morning, early, before the lingering autumn
+sun has opened its drowsy eyes, the heavens are black with their flying
+squadrons.
+
+But the final death-struggle is not yet over, the warmth in all
+vegetation is not yet chilled; bright flowers still bloom at the feet
+of the fast-thinning trees, and, shaking the falling leaves from their
+cups, laugh up at the blue skies.
+
+The little company which at the beginning of this simple story we found
+assembled at Erlach Court is now dispersed to all quarters of the
+world: the general is 'grazing,' as Jack Leskjewitsch expresses it,
+with somebody in Southern Hungary; Stasy is fluttering, with sweet
+smiles and covert malice, from friend to friend, seeming at present on
+the lookout for a fixed engagement for the winter; Rohritz is off on
+his wonted autumnal hunting-expedition, and more than usually bored by
+it; and the Leskjewitsches are still at Erlach Court, where Freddy is
+in perpetual conflict with his new tutor, a spare, lank philosopher
+lately imported for him from Bohemia, and Katrine quaffs full draughts
+of her beloved solitude, without experiencing the great degree of
+rapture she had anticipated from it; there is a cloud upon her brow,
+and her annoyance is principally due to the fact that the captain
+begins to show unmistakable signs of a lapse from his former manly
+energy of character; he scarcely holds himself as erect as was his
+wont, and the only occupation which he pursues with any notable degree
+of self-sacrifice and devotion is the breaking of a pair of very young
+and very fiery horses. This praiseworthy pursuit, however, absorbs only
+a few hours at most of each day, and he kills the rest of the time as
+best he can, irritating by his idleness his wife, who is always
+occupied with most interesting matters. In addition he reads silly
+novels, and greatly admires the 'Maitre de Forges.'
+
+"How can any man admire the 'Maitre de Forges'?" Katrine asks,
+indignantly.
+
+The Baroness and Stella have been back in their mill-cottage at Zalow
+for many weeks, and Stella is, as usual, left entirely to herself.
+
+In addition to the daily scribbling over of various sheets of foolscap,
+the Baroness, instead of bestowing any attention upon her daughter, is
+mainly occupied with superintending the carrying out of all the
+governmental prophylactic measures which are to secure to Zalow entire
+immunity from the cholera. She has come off victorious in many a battle
+with the culpably negligent village authority, and, to the immense
+edification of the inmates of the various villas, already somewhat
+accustomed to the vagaries of the Baroness Meineck, she now goes from
+one manure-heap to another of the place, at the head of a battalion of
+barefooted village children provided with watering-pots filled with a
+disinfectant, the due apportionment of which she thus oversees herself.
+
+It was long an undecided question whether this winter, like the last,
+should be spent in Zalow. Finally the Baroness decided that it was
+absolutely necessary for herself as well as for Stella that the cold
+season of the year should be passed in Paris, for herself that she
+might have access to much information needed for the completion of her
+'work,' for Stella that a final polish might be given to her singing
+and that she might be definitively prepared for the stage.
+
+Every one who has ever had anything to do with Lina Meineck knows that
+if she once takes any scheme into her head it is sure to be carried
+out: therefore, having made up her mind to go to Paris, she will go,
+although no one among all her relatives has an idea of where the
+requisite funds are to come from.
+
+It does not occur to any one that she could lay hands upon the small
+fortune belonging to Stella, who has lately been declared of age.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                                 ZALOW.
+
+
+It is a mild autumn afternoon; Stella, just returned from a visit to
+her sister, who has lately been blessed by the arrival of a little
+daughter, has taken a seat with some trifling piece of work in her
+mother's study to tell her about the pretty child and Franzi's
+household, but at her first word her mother calls out to her from her
+writing-table,--
+
+"Not now,--not now, I beg; do not disturb me."
+
+And the girl, silenced and mortified, bends over the tiny shirt which
+she has begun to crochet for her little niece, and keeps all that she
+had hoped to tell to herself.
+
+The autumn sun shines in at the window, and its crimson light gleams
+upon a large tin box standing on the floor in a corner, the box in
+which the deceased colonel had kept all the letters he ever received
+from his wife. Tied up with ribbon, and methodically arranged according
+to their dates, they are packed away here just as they were sent to his
+wife from his old quarters at Enns. She has never looked at them, has
+not even taken the trouble to destroy them, but has simply pushed them
+aside as useless rubbish.
+
+Stella had rummaged among them, with indescribable sensations in
+deciphering these yellow documents with their faint odour of lavender
+and decay, for here were letters full of ardour and passion, letters in
+which Lina Meineck wrote to her husband, for instance, when he was away
+during the Schleswig campaign,--
+
+"The weather is fine to-day, and every one is praising the lovely
+spring; but it is always winter for me in your absence; with you away
+my thermometer always stands at ten degrees below zero!"
+
+With a shudder Stella put back these relics of a dead love in their
+little coffin. It was as if she had heard a corpse speak.
+
+Since then she has often wished to burn the letters, out of
+affectionate reverence for the dead who held them sacred, but she has
+never summoned up sufficient courage to ask her mother's permission.
+
+The little shirt is finished; with a sigh Stella folds it together, and
+is just wondering what she shall do next to occupy the rest of the
+afternoon, when the Baroness says,--
+
+"Have you nothing to do, Stella?"
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+"Well, then, you can run over to Schwarz's and buy me a couple of
+quires of paper; my supply is exhausted, and I will, meanwhile, have
+tea brought up."
+
+Donning her hat and gloves, Stella sets forth. Herr Schwarz is the only
+shopkeeper in the village, and his shop contains a more heterogeneous
+collection of articles than the biggest shop in Paris. He often boasts
+that he has everything for sale, from poison for rats, and dynamite
+bombs, to paper collars and scented soap. His shop is at the other end
+of the village from the mill, and to reach it Stella must pass the most
+ornate of the villas.
+
+Most of the summer residents have left Zalow; only a few special
+enthusiasts for country air have been induced by the exceptionally fine
+autumn weather to prolong their stay. In the garden of the tailor who
+built himself a hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First a group
+of people are disputing around a croquet-hoop in the centre of a very
+small lawn, and in the Girofle Villa some one is practising Schumann's
+'Etudes symphoniques' with frantic ardour. Stella smiles; the last
+sound that fell upon her ears before she went to Erlach Court with
+her mother was the 'Etudes symphoniques,' the first that greeted her
+upon her return in the middle of August was the 'Etudes symphoniques.'
+She knows precisely who is so persistently given over to these
+rhapsodies,--an odd creature, a woman named Fuhrwesen, who has been a
+teacher of the piano for some years in Russia, and who, now over forty,
+still hopes for a career as an artist.
+
+Stella's little commission is soon attended to. As she hands her mother
+the paper on her return, their only servant, a barefooted girl from the
+village, with a red-and-black checked kerchief tied about her head,
+brings the tea into the room.
+
+"A letter has come for you," the Baroness says to her daughter,--"a
+letter from Graetz. I do not know the hand. Who can be writing to you
+from Graetz? Where did I put it?"
+
+And while her mother is rummaging among her papers for the letter,
+Stella repeats, with a throbbing heart, "From Graetz. Who can be writing
+to me from Graetz?" and she covertly kisses the four-leaved clover on
+her bracelet which is to bring her good fortune, and proceeds instantly
+to build a charming castle in the air.
+
+Her uncle has told her of Edgar's loss of property and his consequent
+inability to think of marriage at present. Perhaps Uncle Jack told her
+this to comfort her. That Edgar loves her she has, with the unerring
+instinct of total inexperience of the world, read, not once, but
+hundreds of times, in his eyes, and consequently she has spent
+many a long autumn evening in wondering whether he is looking for a
+position--some lucrative employment--to enable him to marry. He is not
+lacking in attainments; he could work if he would. "And he will for my
+sake," the heart of this foolish, fantastic young person exults in
+thinking.
+
+From day to day she has been hoping that he would send her--perhaps
+through Jack or Katrine--some message, hitherto in vain. But now at
+last he has written himself; for from whom else could this letter from
+Graetz be? She knew no human being there save himself.
+
+"Here is the letter," her mother says, at last.
+
+Stella opens it hastily, and starts.
+
+"Whom is it from?" asks the Baroness. She uses the hour for afternoon
+tea to rest from her literary labours; with her feet upon the round of
+a chair in front of her, a volume of Buckle in her lap, a pile of books
+beside her, a number of the 'Revue des deux Mondes' in her left hand,
+and her teacup in her right, she partakes alternately of the refreshing
+beverage and of an article upon Henry the Eighth. "Whom is the letter
+from?" she asks, absently, laying her cup aside to take up a volume of
+Froude.
+
+"From Stasy," Stella replies.
+
+"Ah! what does she want?"
+
+"She asks me to send her from Rumberger's, in Prague, three hundred
+napkins or so, upon approbation, that she may oblige some friend of
+hers whom I do not know, and for whom I do not care."
+
+"Positively insolent!" remarks the Baroness. "And does she say nothing
+else?"
+
+"Nothing of any consequence," says Stella, reading on and suddenly
+changing colour.
+
+"Ah!" The Baroness marks the Revue with her pencil. When she looks up
+again, Stella has left the room. Without wasting another thought upon
+her, the student goes on with her reading.
+
+Stella, meanwhile, is lying on the bed in her little room, into
+which the moon shines marking the floor with the outlines of the
+window-panes. Her face is buried among the pillows, and she is crying
+as if her heart would break.
+
+'Nothing of any consequence'! True enough, of no consequence for the
+Baroness, that second sheet of Stasy's, but for Stella of great, of
+immense consequence.
+
+"Guess whom I encountered lately at Steinbach?" writes the
+Gurlichingen. "Edgar Rohritz. Of course we talked of our dear Erlach
+Court, and consequently of you. He spoke very kindly of you, only
+regretting that in consequence of your odd education, or of a certain
+exaggeration of temperament, you lacked reserve, _tenue_, a defect
+which might be unfortunate for you in life. Of course I defended you.
+They say everywhere that he is betrothed to Emmy Strahlenheim.
+
+"Have you heard the news,--the very latest? Rohritz _is_ a sly fellow
+indeed. All that loss of property of which we heard so much was only a
+fraud. The report originated in some trifling depreciation of certain
+bank-stock. He did not contradict the report, allowing himself to be
+thought impoverished that he might escape the persecutions of the
+mothers and daughters of Graetz. Max Steinbach let out the secret a
+while ago. Is it not the best joke in the world? I am glad no one can
+accuse me of ever making the slightest advances to him."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                                WINTER.
+
+
+The death-struggle of the year is over,--past are the treacherous
+gleams of sunlight among falling leaves and smiling flowers,--past,
+past! Cold and grave like a hired executioner, mute and secret like a
+midnight assassin, the first hard frost has fallen upon the earth in
+the previous night and completed its great work of destruction.
+
+It is All Souls'; the Meinecks leave for Paris in the evening, and
+in the morning Stella goes to mass in the little church on the
+mountain-side at the foot of which is the churchyard,--the churchyard
+in which the colonel lies buried. The flames of the thick wax candles
+on the altar, the flames of the candles thick and thin lighted
+everywhere in memory of the dead, flicker dull and red in the gray
+daylight.
+
+In one of the carved seats beside the altar sits the priest's sister,
+her prayer-book bound in red velvet, and a large yellow rose in her new
+winter hat. She nods kindly to Stella when she enters, and gathers her
+skirts aside to make room for her.
+
+In the body of the long narrow church are cowering on the benches all
+kinds of dilapidated figures, men and women, almost all old, frail, and
+crippled,--those able to work have no time to pray. It is very cold;
+their breath comes as vapour from their lips; the outlines of their
+blue wrinkled faces show vaguely behind clouds of yellowish-gray smoke;
+the odour of damp stone and damp clothes mingles with the smell of
+incense and wax; the sputter of the candles, the dripping of the wax,
+the rattle of beads, mingle with the monotonous chant of the priest at
+the altar.
+
+When mass is over, and she has taken leave of the priest's kindly
+sister, Stella goes out into the churchyard,--a miserable place, with
+neglected graves, scarcely elevated in mounds above the ground, with
+iron crosses upon which rust has eaten away the inscriptions, or wooden
+ones which the wind has blown down to lie rotting on the ground. The
+colonel's grave is beneath a weeping-willow at the extreme end of the
+churchyard, whence one can look directly down upon the broad shining
+stream. Tended like a garden-bed by Stella, cherished as the very apple
+of her eye, it yet looks dreary enough to-day: the leaves are hanging
+black and withered from the stalks of the chrysanthemums which Stella
+planted with her own hands only a few weeks ago, their pretty flowers,
+which but yesterday stood forth red and yellow against the blue of the
+sky, now colourless and faded beyond recognition. A wreath of fresh
+flowers lies among the chrysanthemums, but these too are beginning to
+fade. Stella kneels down on the gray rimy grass beside the grave and
+kisses fervently the hard frozen ground.
+
+"Adieu, papa," she murmurs, and then adds, "But why say adieu to you?
+You are always with me everywhere I go; you are beside me, a loving
+guardian angel seeking for happiness for me. Do not grieve too much
+that you cannot find it: open your arms and take me to you; I am all
+ready."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Then the mill is closed; the keys are left with the pastor, and the
+Meinecks go to Prague, which on the same evening they leave by the
+train for the west. As far as Furth they are alone, but when they
+change coupes after the examination of their luggage they are unable,
+in spite of bribing the officials, to exclude strangers. At the last
+moment, just as the train is about to start, a lady with two handbags,
+a travelling-case, a shawl-strap, and a bandbox steps into their
+compartment and hopes she does not disturb them. Much vexed, Stella
+scans the lady, who wears a water-proof adorned with as many tassels as
+bedeck the trappings of an Andalusian mule, and with a red pompon in
+her hat, fastened in its place with a bird's claw four inches long.
+Stella instantly recognizes her as Fraeulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, the same
+pianist who has been spending her holidays upon the 'Etudes
+symphoniques;' she recognizes Stella at the same moment, and, although
+until now she never has exchanged four words with her, hails her as an
+old acquaintance and enters into conversation; that is, without waiting
+for replies from the young girl she imparts to her the story of her
+entire life.
+
+In the course of her experience as teacher of the piano in Russia, of
+which mention has already been made, she has learned much of the rude
+nature of Russian social life and the amiability of young Russian
+princes; at present she is on her way to Paris, whence she is to make a
+tour with an impresario through South America and Australia, by the way
+of Uruguay and Tasmania. Apart from the artistic laurels she expects to
+win, she anticipates furthering greatly the advance of civilization
+among the savage aborigines by her musical efforts.
+
+She asks Stella several times why she is so silent, and when the girl
+excuses herself on the plea of a headache she says she had better eat
+something, and produces from her travelling-case, embroidered with red
+and white roses, and from between a flannel dressing-sacque and various
+toilet articles, a bulky brown package containing the remains of a cold
+capon.
+
+Stella thanks her, and declines the tempting delicacy, saying that she
+will try to sleep.
+
+Fraeulein Fuhrwsen of course attributes Stella's reserve to the
+notorious arrogance of the Meinecks, who will have nothing to say to a
+poor pianist, and, mortally offended, she likewise takes refuge in
+silence.
+
+Stella dozes.
+
+The conductor opens the door to tell the ladies that the next station
+is Nuremberg, whereupon the artiste takes a comb and a tangled braid of
+false hair out of her travelling-case and begins to dress her hair.
+
+The train puffs and whizzes through the grayish light of the late
+autumn morning and stops with a shrill whistle at Nuremberg.
+
+Stella and her mother through the pillars of the railway-station catch
+a glimpse, among the picturesque gables and roofs of the old town, of
+ugly new houses pretentious in style, looking as if built of
+pasteboard; they partake of a miserable breakfast, buy a package of
+gingerbread and a volume of Tauchnitz, get into another train, and are
+whirled away, on--on--through yellow and brown harvest-fields, through
+small bristling forests of pines and barren meadows, past villages,
+churchyards, and little towns that look positively dead. Late in the
+afternoon the Rhine comes in sight: gray, shrouded in mist, not at all
+like itself, without sunshine, without merriment, without Englishmen,
+almost without steamers, it grumbles and groans as if vexed by some
+evil, melancholy dream, while a thousand sad sighs tremble through the
+red-and-yellow vineyards on its shores,--the shores where folly grows.
+
+Away--on--on! More dead towns, with dreamy old names that fall upon the
+ear like echoes of ancient legends. Everything is drowsy; gray shadows
+cover the earth; the night falls; green and red lanterns gleam through
+the darkness.
+
+Cologne!
+
+Cologne, where one can sup, and dress, and at all events see the
+cathedral in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                            SOPHIE OBLONSKY.
+
+
+Stella and her mother have finished their supper. The Baroness, who has
+exhausted her entire stock of literary food provided for the journey,
+is at the book-stall, looking for more reading-matter; she examines the
+counterfeit presentments on exhibition there of the great German
+heroes, the Emperor Wilhelm, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, among which
+distinguished personages chance has slipped in the portrait of
+Mademoiselle Zampa. Suddenly, under a pile of books that seem to have
+been pushed out of the way, she discovers a green pamphlet which she
+instantly recognizes as a child of her own, an essay entitled 'Is Woman
+to be Independent?' Of course she buys the book, and, betaking herself
+to the small 'ladies' parlour' adjoining the spacious waiting-room,
+takes a seat opposite Stella, and, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm,
+is soon absorbed in the study of her work.
+
+Meanwhile, Stella has vainly tried to become interested in the English
+novel purchased at Nuremberg; she leaves the lovers, after their
+twenty-second reconciliation, beneath a blossoming hawthorn, and,
+closing the book with a slight yawn, sits up and looks about her. At
+the other end of the room, as far as possible from Stella, sits the
+pianist, writing a letter: from time to time she looks up to bestow
+upon Stella a hostile glance. On the other side of the same table two
+ladies are engaged in partaking of the best supper that the restaurant
+of the railway-hotel can afford,--a supper with _foie gras_, mayonnaise
+of lobster, and a bottle of champagne. One of them, with the figure and
+face of a Juno, her costly furs falling gracefully from her full
+shoulders, is so perfumed that even the atmosphere about Stella reeks
+with _peau d'Espagne_. Eyebrows, lips--her entire face is painted; and
+yet she does not look in the least like a travelling prima donna.
+
+"Can that be the Princess Oblonsky?" Stella says to herself, with a
+start. "No doubt of it: it is."
+
+And there beside the Princess, on Stella's side of the table, but with
+her back to her,--who is that?
+
+Jack Leskjewitsch always used to declare that Stasy's shoulders were
+shaped like a champagne-bottle. Stella wonders whether anywhere in the
+world can be found a pair of more sloping shoulders than those which
+that fur-trimmed circular fails to conceal. Both ladies devote their
+entire attention for a time to their supper; at last the Princess
+pushes away her plate with a certain impatience, and with an odd smile
+says, "Where did you first know him?"
+
+"Whom?" asks the other.
+
+It is Stasy, of course; there may be another woman in the world with
+those same sloping shoulders, but there can be none with such a thin,
+affected voice.
+
+"Why, him, my chevalier _sans peur et sans reproche_," says the
+Princess.
+
+"Edgar? Oh, I spent a long time in the same house with him last
+summer," Stasy declares. "He is still one of the most interesting men I
+have ever met. Such a profile! such eyes! and so attractive in manner!"
+
+The ladies speak French, the Princess with perfect fluency but a rather
+hard accent, Stasy somewhat stumblingly.
+
+"Strange!" the Oblonsky murmurs.
+
+"What is strange?" asks Stasy.
+
+"Why, that you have seen him," the Princess replies; "that he is yet
+alive; in fact, that he ever did live, and that we loved each other. I
+was wont for so many years to regard that episode at Baden-Baden as a
+dream that at last I forgot that the dream had any connection with
+reality." The words fall from the beautiful woman's lips slowly,
+softly, with veiled richness and intense melancholy. After a pause she
+goes on: "I seem to have read there in Baden-Baden a romance which
+enthralled my entire being! It was on a lovely summer day, and the
+roses were in bloom all about me, while delicious music in the distance
+fell dreamily and softly on my ear, and the fragrance of roses and the
+charm of melody mingled with the poem I was reading. Suddenly, and
+before I had read to the end, the romance slipped from my hands, and
+since then I have sought it in vain! But it still seems to me more
+charming than all the romances in the world; and I cannot cease from
+searching for it, that I may read the last chapter." Then, suddenly
+changing her tone, she shrugs her shoulders and says, "Who can tell
+what disappointment awaits me?--how Edgar may have changed? How does he
+seem? Is he gay, contented with his lot?"
+
+"No, Sonja, that he is not," Stasy assures her, sentimentally. "To be
+sure, he is too proud to parade his grief; in society he bears himself
+coldly, indifferently; but there is an inexpressible melancholy in his
+look. Oh, he has not forgotten!"
+
+Stella's eyes flash angrily.
+
+"She lies!" the heart in her breast cries out; "she lies!"
+
+Meanwhile, the friends clasp each other's hands sympathetically.
+
+"He never knew how I suffered," the Princess sighs. "Does he suppose
+that I accepted Oblonsky's hand with any thought of self? No,--a
+thousand times no! I determined to free Edgar from the martyrdom he was
+enduring from his family because of me. I took upon myself the burden
+of a joyless, loveless marriage, I had myself nailed to the cross, for
+his sake!"
+
+"She lies!" Stella's heart cries out again; "she lies!"
+
+But Stasy sighs, "I always understood you, Sonja." After a pause she
+adds, "You know, I suppose, that he grew gray immediately after that
+sad affair,--after your marriage,--almost in a single night?"
+
+"Gray!" murmurs the Princess; "gray! And he had such beautiful
+dark-brown hair. He must have heard much evil of me; perhaps he
+believed it: it pleases men to think evil of the women who have caused
+them suffering. Well, you know how innocent were all the little
+flirtations with which I tried in vain to fill the dreary vacuum of my
+existence, from the artists whom I patronized, to Zino Capito, with
+whom I trifled. If only some one could explain it all to him!--or
+if"--the Princess's eyes gleam with conscious power,--"if I could only
+meet him myself, then----"
+
+"Then what?" says Stasy, threatening her friend archly with her
+forefinger; "then you would turn his head again, only to leave him to
+drag out a still drearier existence than before."
+
+"You are mistaken," the Princess whispers. "There is many a strain of
+music that beginning in a minor key changes to major only to close
+softly and sweetly in minor tones. Anastasia, my first marriage was a
+tomb in which I was buried alive----"
+
+"And would you be buried alive for the second time?" Stasy asks.
+
+"No; I long for a resurrection."
+
+A cold shiver of dread thrills Stella from head to foot. The Baroness
+looks up from her pamphlet and exclaims, "I really must read you this,
+Stella. I do not understand how this brochure did not attract more
+notice. To be sure, when one lives so entirely withdrawn from all
+intercourse with the literary world, and has no connection at all with
+the journals, one may expect----"
+
+Stasy turns around. "My dear Baroness!" she exclaims, with effusion.
+"And you too, Stella! What a delightful surprise! I must introduce you:
+Baroness Meineck and her daughter,--Princess Oblonsky."
+
+With the extreme graciousness which all great ladies whose social
+position is partly compromised testify towards their thoroughly
+respectable sisters, the Princess rises and offers her hand to both
+Stella and her mother. The Baroness smiles absently; Stella does not
+smile, and barely touches with her finger-tips the hand extended to
+her. Meanwhile, Stasy has recognized in Fraeulein Fuhrwesen an old
+acquaintance from Zalow.
+
+"Good-day, Fraeulein Bertha!"--"Fraeulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, a very fine
+pianist,"--to the Princess; then to the Meinecks, "You are already
+acquainted with her." And while the Princess talks with much
+condescension to the pianist of her adoration for music, Stasy whispers
+to Stella, "Don't be so stiff towards Sonja: you might almost be
+supposed to be jealous of her."
+
+"Ridiculous!" Stella says angrily through her set teeth, and blushing
+to the roots of her hair.
+
+Stasy taps her on the cheek with her forefinger, with a pitying glance
+that takes in her entire person, from her delicate--almost too
+delicate--pale face to her shabby travelling-dress, the identical brown
+army-cloak which she had worn on the journey to Venice three years
+before, and rejoins,--
+
+"Ridiculous indeed--most ridiculous--to dream of rivalling Sonja.
+Wherever she appears, we ordinary women are nowhere."
+
+"Verviers--Paris--Brussels!" the porter shouts into the room.
+
+All rise, and pick up plaids and travelling-bags; the porters
+hurry in; a lanky footman and a sleepy-looking maid wait upon the
+Princess Oblonsky, who nods graciously as they all crowd out upon the
+railway-platform. The Meinecks enter a coupe where an American whose
+trousers are too short, and his wife whose hat is too large, have
+already taken their seats. The pianist looks in at the door, but as
+soon as she perceives Stella starts back with horror in her face.
+
+"I seem to have made an enemy of that woman," Stella thinks,
+negligently. What does it matter to her? Poor Stella! Could she but
+look into the future!
+
+The train starts; while the Baroness, neglectful of the simplest
+precautions with regard to her eyes, continues to peruse her
+masterpiece by the yellow light of the coupe lamp, the American goes to
+sleep, hat and all, upon her companion's shoulder, and Stella sits bolt
+upright in the cool draught of night air by the window, repeating to
+herself alternately, "I long for a resurrection!" and "Wherever Sonja
+appears, we ordinary women are nowhere!"
+
+She, then, is the enchantress who has ruined the happiness of his
+life,--she the---- She is indeed beautiful; but how hollow,--how false!
+Everything about her--soul, heart, and all--is painted, like her face.
+Could he possibly be her dupe a second time? Suddenly the girl feels
+the blood rush to her cheeks.
+
+"What affair is it of mine? What do I care?" she asks herself, angrily.
+"He too is false, vain, and heartless; he too can act a part."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                                 PARIS.
+
+
+Stella has scarcely closed her eyes, when the train reaches Paris,
+about six o'clock. The morning is cold and damp, the usual darkness of
+the time of day disagreeably enhanced by the white gloom of an autumn
+fog,--a gloom which the street-lamps are powerless to counteract, and
+in which they show like lustreless red specks.
+
+Through this depressing white gloom, Stella and her mother are driven
+in a rattling little omnibus, with a couple of other travellers,
+through a Paris as silent as the grave, to the Hotel Bedford, Rue
+Pasquier. An Englishwoman at Nice once recommended it to the Baroness
+as that wonder of wonders, a first-class hotel with second-class
+prices, and it is under English patronage. English lords and ladies now
+and then occupy the first story, and consequently the garret-rooms are
+continually inhabited by impoverished but highly distinguished scions
+of English "county families." In the reading-room, between 'Burke's
+Peerage' and Lodge's 'Vicissitudes of Families' is placed an album
+containing the photographs of two peeresses. The _clientele_ is as
+aristocratic as it is economical: each despises all the rest, and one
+and all dispute the weekly bills. Stella and her mother are by no means
+enchanted with this hotel, and they sally forth as soon as they are
+somewhat rested, in search of furnished lodgings.
+
+But the funds are scanty: their expenses ought to be paid out of a
+hundred and fifty francs a month!
+
+The first day passes, and our Austrians have as yet found nothing
+suitable. The cheapest lodgings are confined and dark, and smell, as
+the ladies express it, of English people; that is, of a mixture of
+camphor, patchouli, and old nut-shells. The bedrooms in these cheap
+lodgings consist of a sort of windowless closets, entirely dependent
+for ventilation upon a door into the drawing-room which can be left
+open at night.
+
+Meanwhile, the living at the Bedford is dear. The Baroness arrives at
+the conclusion that private quarters at three hundred francs a month
+would be more economical, and finally decides to spend this sum upon
+her winter residence.
+
+For three hundred francs very much better lodgings are to be had; the
+bedrooms have windows, but there are still all kinds of discomforts to
+be endured, the worst of which consists perhaps in the fact that none
+of the proprietors of these rooms, which are mostly intended for
+bachelors, is willing to undertake to provide food for the two ladies.
+
+At last in the Rue de Leze an _appartement_ is found which answers
+their really moderate requirements; but just at the last moment the
+Baroness discovers that the concierge is a very suspicious-looking
+individual, and remembers that the previous year a horrible murder was
+committed in the Rue de Leze; wherefore negotiations are at once broken
+off.
+
+A pretty _appartement_ in the Rue de l'Arcade pleases Stella
+particularly, perhaps because the drawing-room is furnished with buhl
+cabinets. The Baroness is just about to close with the concierge, who
+does the honours of the place,--there is merely a question of five
+francs to be settled,--when with a suspicious sniff she remarks, "'Tis
+strange how strongly the atmosphere of this room is impregnated with
+musk!"
+
+Whereupon the concierge explains that the rooms have lately been
+occupied by Mexican gentlemen, who shared the reprehensible Southern
+habit of indulging too freely in perfumes; and when the Baroness
+glances doubtfully at a dressing-table which scarcely presents a
+masculine appearance, and which boasts a sky-blue pincushion stuck full
+of different kinds of pins, he hastens to add, without waiting to be
+questioned, that the Mexican gentlemen had chiefly occupied themselves
+in collecting and arranging butterflies.
+
+"Mexican men would seem to have long fair hair, mamma," Stella here
+interposes, having just pulled a golden hair at least a yard long out
+of the crochetted antimacassar of a low chair.
+
+The face of the Baroness, who always suspects French immorality
+everywhere, turns to marble; tossing her head, she grasps Stella by the
+hand and hurries out with her, passing the astounded concierge without
+so much as deigning to bid him good-bye.
+
+She refuses to take a lodging in the Rue Pasquier, because it seems to
+her 'too reasonable;' she is convinced that some one must have died of
+cholera in a certain big bed with red curtains, else the rent never
+would have been so low.
+
+At last, after a four days' pilgrimage, the ladies find what answers
+their requirements in a little hotel called 'At the Three Negroes,'
+kept by a kindly, light-hearted Irishwoman.
+
+At the Baroness's first words, "We are looking for lodgings for two
+quiet, respectable ladies," she instantly rejoins, "My house will
+suit you exactly; the quietest house in all Paris. I never receive
+any--hm!--a certain kind of ladies, and never more than one Deputy;
+two always quarrel." Whereupon the Irishwoman and the Austrian lady
+come to terms immediately, and the Meinecks move into the second
+story of 'The Three Negroes' that very day, the Irishwoman being quite
+ready also to provide them with food. The price for a salon and two
+bedrooms--with very large windows, 'tis true, as Stella observes is
+three hundred and twenty francs a month.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+After the lodgings are thus fortunately secured the Baroness sets about
+finding a singing-teacher for Stella. Always decided and to the point,
+she goes directly to the man in authority at the Grand Opera to inquire
+for a 'first-class Professor.' Oddly enough, it appears that this
+authority has no time to attend to matters so important. Dismissed with
+but slight encouragement, the Baroness tries her fortune at the office
+of one of the smaller operas; but since she presents herself here with
+her daughter without introduction of any kind, the official seated
+behind a dusty writing-table has no time to devote to her, all that he
+has being absorbed in a quarrel with two ladies who have just applied
+to him for the ninth time,--"yes," he exclaims, with a despairing
+flourish of his hands, "for the ninth time this month, for free
+tickets!"
+
+Whilst the Baroness and Stella linger hesitatingly on the threshold, a
+slender, sallow young man with sharply-cut features, and with a
+picturesque Astrachan collar and a very long surtout, enters the place
+by an opposite door. He scans Stella's face and figure keenly, and,
+approaching her, asks what she desires. The Baroness informs him of
+their business, whereupon ensues an exchange of civilities and mutual
+introductions.
+
+The gentleman in the fur collar is none other than the famous
+impresario Morinski, now on the lookout for a new Patti.
+
+With a pleasant glance towards Stella, he asks who has been the young
+lady's teacher hitherto.
+
+Of whom has she not taken lessons! The list of her teachers embraces
+Carelli at Naples, Lamperti at Milan, Garcia in London, and Tosti in
+Rome.
+
+Here Morinski shakes his black curly head, says, "Too many cooks spoil
+the broth," and asks, "Why did you not stay longer with one teacher?"
+
+The Baroness takes it upon herself to reply, and explains at
+considerable length how her historical schemes and researches have
+hitherto rendered a wandering life for herself and her daughter
+imperatively necessary.
+
+Morinski, who seems to take more interest in Stella's fine eyes than in
+her mother's historical studies, interrupts the elder lady with some
+rudeness, and, turning to Stella, asks, "Do you intend to go upon the
+stage?"
+
+"Yes," Stella meekly replies.
+
+"Only upon condition of her capacity to become a star of the first
+magnitude should I consent to my daughter's going upon the stage," the
+Baroness declares, in her magnificent manner.
+
+"It is a little difficult to prognosticate with certainty in such a
+case," Herr Morinski observes, with an odd smile. "Hm! hm! You may
+sometimes see a brilliant meteor flash across the skies, larger
+apparently than any of the stars; you fix your eyes upon it, but hardly
+have you begun to admire so exquisite a natural phenomenon when it has
+vanished. Another time you scarcely perceive a small red spark lying on
+the pavement, but before you are aware of it, it has set fire to half
+the town. Just so it is with our artistic _debuts_."
+
+At the close of this tirade, which Herr Morinski has enunciated in very
+harsh French with a strong Jewish accent, he turns again to Stella and
+asks, "Will you sing me something? It would interest me very much to
+hear you."
+
+Stella's heart beats fast. How many other singers have had to engage in
+an interminable correspondence and to entreat for infinite patronage
+before gaining admission to the famous Morinski and inducing him to
+listen to them, while he has asked her to sing, unsolicited, after
+scarcely ten minutes' conversation!
+
+She gratefully accedes to his proposal.
+
+"I should greatly prefer your making the trial on the stage itself,
+rather than in the foyer," says Morinski. "I could decide far better as
+to the strength of your voice. Have the kindness to follow me."
+
+And, leading the way, he precedes them through an endless labyrinth of
+ill-lighted corridors to the stage, which, illuminated at this hour by
+only a couple of foot-lights, shows gray and colourless against the
+pitch-dark auditorium.
+
+The boards of the stage are marked with various lines in chalk,
+cabalistic signs of mysterious significance to Stella; in front of the
+prompter's box stands a prima donna with her bonnet-strings untied and
+her fur cloak hanging loosely about her shoulders, singing in an
+undertone a duet with a tenor in a tall silk hat who is kneeling at her
+feet; at the piano, just below, sits the leader of the orchestra, a
+little Italian, with long, straight, white hair, and dark eyebrows that
+protrude for at least an inch over his fierce black eyes, pounding away
+at the accompaniment, evidently more to accentuate the rhythm than with
+any desire to accompany harmoniously the duet of the pair.
+
+"The rehearsal will be over immediately," Morinski assures the two
+ladies.
+
+In fact, the duo between the prima donna and the tenor shortly comes to
+an end. A short discussion ensues, during which the prima donna
+alternately scolds the leader, whom she accuses of paying no attention
+to the _ritardandos_, and the tenor for his "lamentable want of all
+passion."
+
+Morinski throws himself metaphorically between the disputants and
+kisses the prima donna's hand. Without paying him much attention, she
+scans Stella from head to foot, says, with an ironical depression of
+the corners of her mouth, "Ah! a new star, Morinski!" and withdraws,
+with an intensely theatrical stride, her loose fur dolman trailing
+behind her.
+
+"Hm! a new star, Morinski!" the leader repeats also ironically,
+stuffing an immense pinch of snuff the while into his nose.
+
+"Let us hope so," Morinski replies, with reproving courtesy.
+
+"Is the signorina to sing us something? It is twelve o'clock, Morinski;
+I am hungry. If it must be, let us be quick. What shall I accompany for
+you, mademoiselle?"
+
+"_Ah fors' e lui che l'anima!_" Stella says, in a shy whisper,
+"from----"
+
+"I know, I know,--from Traviata," the leader replies. "You sing it in
+the original key?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Almost before Stella has time to take breath, the little man has struck
+the chords of the prelude. In the midst of the aria he takes his hands
+from the keys, and shakes his head disapprovingly, so that his long
+hair flutters about his ears.
+
+"_Eh bien?_" Morinski calls, with some irritation.
+
+"I have heard enough," the other declares, decidedly. "Haven't you,
+Morinski? It is a perfectly impossible way to sing,--a perfectly
+impossible way!"
+
+"Do not be discouraged, Fraeulein," says Morinski, reassuringly. "Your
+voice is superb, full, soft,--one of the finest that I have heard for a
+long time."
+
+"I do not say no, Morinski," the leader interposes, with the croak of a
+raven, "but she is absolutely lacking in rhythm, routine, and aplomb."
+
+"She needs a good teacher," says Morinski.
+
+"The teacher has nothing to do with it!" shouts the leader, and with an
+annihilating stare at Stella he sums up his judgment of her in the
+words, "_C'est une femme du monde_. You will never make a singer of
+her!" Then, with the energy that characterizes his every movement, he
+sets about trying to repair the injury he has just done to his silk hat
+by brushing it the wrong way.
+
+Poor Stella's eyes fill with tears. Morinski takes both her hands:
+
+"Do not be discouraged, I beg of you, my dear mademoiselle, I entreat;"
+and with an ardent glance at her delicate face he assures her, "Believe
+me, you have great qualifications for success on the stage."
+
+"Trust to my experience,--the experience of forty years; you never will
+succeed on the stage!" shouts the Italian.
+
+"Never mind what he says," Morinski whispers. "I will do all I can for
+you. I shall take great pleasure in superintending your lessons
+personally."
+
+But the leader has sharp ears: "_Pas de betises_, Morinski!" He has put
+on his hat, and is searching with characteristic eagerness in all his
+pockets. "There is my card," he says, at last, drawing it forth and
+handing it to the Baroness. "If you want your daughter taught to sing,
+take her to della Seggiola, Rue Lamartine, No ----, the singing-teacher
+of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the Faubourg Saint-Honore, precisely
+what you want. Refer to me if you like; he will make his charges
+reasonable for you. _Dio mio_, how hungry I am! _Allons_, Morinski!"
+
+This is the exact history of Stella Meineck's trial of her voice at the
+lyric opera in Paris.
+
+The Baroness has just enough sense and prudence left not to allow
+Stella to take lessons of Morinski.
+
+Following the advice of the energetic Italian, she takes her daughter
+to Signor della Seggiola.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+                          THERESE DE ROHRITZ.
+
+
+Winter--such winter as Paris is familiar with--has set in, to make
+itself at home. The gardeners have stripped the squares and public
+gardens of their last flowers; the trees and the grass and the bare
+sod are powdered with snow. When one says 'as white' or 'as pure' as
+snow, one must never think of Paris snow, for it is brown, black,
+gray,--everything except white; and, as if ashamed of its characterless
+existence, it creeps as soon as possible into the earth.
+
+Full six weeks have passed since the Meinecks took up their abode in
+'The Three Negroes.' In order to increase their means, the Baroness has
+generously determined to write newspaper articles, although she has a
+supreme contempt for all journalistic effort, and she has also
+completed two shorter essays, for which the Berlin 'Tribune' paid her
+twenty-five marks.
+
+With a view to making her descriptions of the world's capital vividly
+real, she pursues her study of Paris with all the thoroughness that
+characterizes her study of history. She has visited the Morgue, as well
+as Valentino's, note-book in hand, but escorted by an old carpenter,
+who once mended a trunk for her and won her heart by his sensible way
+of talking politics. She paid him five francs for his companionship,
+and maintains that he was far less tiresome at Valentino's than a fine
+gentleman. She has devised a most interesting visit shortly to be paid
+to the Parisian sewers. Meanwhile, in order to make herself perfectly
+familiar with the life of the streets, she spends three hours daily,
+two in the forenoon and one in the afternoon, upon the top of various
+omnibuses.
+
+And Stella,--how does she pass her time? Four times a week she takes a
+singing-lesson,--two private lessons, and two in della Seggiola's
+'class,' besides which she practises daily for about two hours at home.
+She is at liberty to spend the rest of her time in any mode of
+self-culture that pleases her. She can go, if she is so inclined, to
+the Rue Richelieu with her mother, or visit the Louvre alone, can
+attend to little matters at home, or read learned works and write
+extracts from them in the book bound in antique leather which her
+mother gave her upon her birthday.
+
+What wealth of various and interesting occupations and pleasures for a
+girl of twenty-one! It is quite inconceivable, but nevertheless it is
+true, that in spite of them she feels lonely and unhappy,--grows daily
+more nervous and restless, and, without being able to define exactly
+the cause of her sadness, more melancholy. Her energetic mother, to
+whom such a vague discontent is absolutely inconceivable, reproaches
+her with a want of earnestness in her studies and induces a physician
+to prescribe iron for her.
+
+What is there that iron is not expected to cure?
+
+To-day Stella is again alone at home; her mother has gone out after
+lunch to take her bird's-eye view of Paris from the top of an omnibus.
+She has graciously offered to take Stella with her, but Stella thanks
+her and declines; she detests riding in omnibuses, on the top she grows
+dizzy, and inside she becomes ill.
+
+"Well, I suppose the only thing that would really please you would be
+to drive in a barouche-and-pair in the Bois," her mother remarks.
+"Unfortunately, that I cannot afford." With which she hurries away.
+
+Stella's throat aches; she often has a throat-ache,--the specific
+throat-ache of a poor child of mortality who has learned to sing with
+seven different professors, and whose voice has been treated at
+different times as a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and a deep contralto.
+She has been obliged to stop practising in consequence, to-day, and has
+taken up a volume of Gibbon, but is too _distraite_ to comprehend what
+she reads. It really is strange how slight an interest she takes in the
+decline of the Roman Empire.
+
+"And if I should not succeed upon the stage, if my voice should not
+turn out well," she constantly asks herself, "what then? what then?"
+
+Why, for a moment--oh, how her cheeks hum as she recalls her
+delusion!--she absolutely allowed herself to imagine that---- How
+bitterly she has learned to sneer at her fantastic dreams!
+
+"Has Edmund Rohritz's wife not yet been to see you?" Leskjewitsch had
+asked her mother in a letter shortly before. "You do not know her, but
+I begged Edgar awhile ago to send her to you,--she would be so
+advantageous an acquaintance for Stella."
+
+"She would indeed," the poor child thinks; "but not even his old
+friend's request has induced him to do me a kindness."
+
+Her sad, weary glance wanders absently over the various lithographs
+that adorn the walls, portraits of famous singers, Tamberlik, Rubini,
+Mario, all with the signature of those celebrities. Apparently the
+hotel must formerly have enjoyed an extensive artistic patronage.
+
+She takes up Gibbon once more, and does her best to become absorbed in
+the destinies of the tribunes of the people. In vain.
+
+"Good heavens!" she exclaims, irritably, "who could read a serious book
+in all this noise? And 'The Negroes' was recommended to us as a quiet
+hotel!"
+
+The Deputy from the south of France is pacing the room above her to and
+fro, now repeating in a murmur and anon declaiming with grotesque
+pathos to the empty air the speech which he is learning by heart.
+
+In the room next to him an amateur performer is piping 'The Last Rose
+of Summer' on a very hoarse flute,--an English bagman, who is suffering
+from an inflammation of the eyes, wherefore we must not grudge him his
+musical distractions. He is piping 'The Last Rose' for the eighteenth
+time; Stella has counted.
+
+"'Tis beyond endurance!" the girl exclaims, closing her Gibbon. "Ah,
+heavens, how dreary life is!" she groans. "I wish I were dead!"
+
+Just then there comes a ring at the door. Stella opens it. A tall,
+smooth-shaven lackey stands in the corridor and hands her a card:
+
+"_La Baronne Edmond de Rohritz, nee Princesse Capito_."
+
+"Madame la Baronne wishes to know if the Frau Baroness is receiving?"
+the man asks, vanishing when Stella assents.
+
+"He probably takes me for a waiting-maid," Stella thinks, childishly,
+not without some petty annoyance that she was forced to open the door
+herself for the servant, and she hurries into the salon, to put away a
+piece of mending which is by no means ornamental. Scarcely has she done
+so when a light foot-fall comes tripping up the stairs. There is
+another ring, and again Stella opens the door. A lady enters, slender,
+very pale, with delicately-cut features, and large, black, rather
+restless eyes, which she slightly closes as she looks at Stella, and
+then pleasantly holds out her hand:
+
+"Mademoiselle Meineck, _n'est-ce pas?_"
+
+Not for one moment is she in doubt whether this tall girl in a plain
+stuff dress be a soubrette or not.
+
+"My brother-in-law Rohritz wrote me some time ago telling me to call
+upon your mother and yourself and to ask if I could be of any service
+to you. I have promised myself the pleasure of doing so every day
+since; my very critical brother's letter inspired me with eager
+curiosity; but one never has time for anything in Paris,--nothing
+pleasant, that is. Well, here I am at last. Is your mother at home?"
+
+"My mother has gone out, but will shortly return; she would greatly
+regret missing you, madame. If you could be content with my society for
+a while----" Stella rejoins.
+
+"I should be delighted to have a little talk with you," the lady
+assures her; "but do you suppose I have time to stay? What an idea in
+Paris! I had to fairly steal a quarter of an hour of time already
+appropriated to come to see you. We must postpone our talk. I trust
+I shall see a great deal of you; I am always at leisure in the
+evening,--that is, when I do not have to go to bed from sheer fatigue!
+And how have you passed the time since you came to Paris?"
+
+Madame de Rohritz has installed herself in an arm-chair by the
+fireplace, has put up her veil and thrown back her furs from her
+shoulders.
+
+A delicate fragrance exhales from her robes; all Parisian women use
+perfumes, but how refined, how exquisite, is this fragrance compared
+with the overpowering odour of _Peau, d'Espagne_ which surrounds the
+Princess Oblonsky!
+
+Therese Rohritz does not possess her brother's beauty, but everything
+about her is graceful and attractive,--her veiled glance,--a glance
+which can be half impertinent sometimes, but which rests upon Stella
+with evident liking,--her beaming and yet slightly weary smile,--yes,
+even her hurried articulation and her high-pitched but soft and
+melodious voice.
+
+"How have you passed the time since you came to Paris?" she asks again.
+
+"We live very quietly," Stella stammers. "Mamma is studying that she
+may finish her book, and of course has no time to go out with me."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know; my brother-in-law told me," Madame de Rohritz
+replies. "And you----"
+
+"I? I take singing-lessons four times a week."
+
+"My brother-in-law wrote me that you intend to go upon the stage."
+Madame de Rohritz laughs. "If I were a Frenchwoman I should be
+horrified at the idea, but I am half an Austrian. I know those whims: a
+cousin of mine, a Russian, Natalie Lipinski----"
+
+"Natalie Lipinski! Ah!" Stella exclaims; "my fellow-student. We take
+lessons together twice a week in Signor della Seggiola's class."
+
+"Indeed! Well, she is thinking of going upon the stage,--and with a
+fortune of ten million roubles. In Austria and Russia such ideas will
+take possession of the brains of the best-born and best-bred girls;
+_cela ne tire pas a consequence!_ I never oppose Natalie, but I mean to
+have her married before she knows what she is about. And what shall I
+do with you, my fair one with the golden locks? Do you know I like you
+exceedingly? _Le coup de foudre en plein_,--love at first sight."
+
+The clock on the chimney-piece--a clock apparently dating from the days
+when 'L'Africaine' was the rage, for the face is adorned with a
+manchineel-tree in miniature and a barbaric maiden in a head-dress of
+feathers dying beneath it--strikes three.
+
+The lady starts up, takes out her watch, and compares it with the
+clock.
+
+"Positively three o'clock, and my poor little boy is waiting for me in
+the carriage! I was to take him to his solfeggio class at three. Adieu,
+adieu; my compliments to your mother, and _au revoir, n'est-ce pas?_"
+She turns once again in the door-way, and, taking both Stella's hands,
+says, "You will come to dine with us once this week with your mother
+quite _en famille_ the first time, that we may learn to know one
+another. I will excuse a formal call: you can pay that later: it is
+silly to lose time with formalities when one is _simpatica_. Adieu,
+adieu. What beautiful eyes you have! _Je me sauve!_"
+
+The lively young madame kisses Stella's forehead, and then goes--or
+rather flies--away.
+
+Stella's heart beats fast and loud.
+
+"After all, he sent her: he has not quite forgotten me."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                           AN AUSTRIAN HOST.
+
+
+"Hm! indeed! Now I can no longer be shabby at my ease." These were the
+words with which the Baroness on her return home greeted Stella's
+joyous announcement of Madame de Rohritz's visit. "I took such pleasure
+in living in a place where nobody knew me."
+
+However problematical in some respects the creative power of the
+Baroness may be, she is certainly thoroughly saturated with what the
+English call 'the sublime egotism of genius.'
+
+When on the morning after her visit a note redolent of violets arrives
+from Madame de Rohritz, inviting in the kindest manner the two ladies
+to dinner at half-past seven the next evening but one, the Baroness
+makes a wry face, and remarks that really Madame de Rohritz might have
+waited until her call had been returned,--that such a degree of
+eagerness on the part of a woman of the world betokens a degree of
+exaggeration,--but, despite her grumbling, permits herself to accede to
+the entreaty in her daughter's eyes, and to accept the invitation.
+
+"Upon condition that you attend to my dress," she says; to which Stella
+of course makes no objection.
+
+The evening wardrobe of the Baroness consists of a black velvet gown
+which is now precisely seventeen years old, and which underwent
+renovation at the time of her eldest daughter's marriage. The number of
+Stella's evening dresses is limited to two very charming gowns
+which the colonel had made for her in Venice, regardless of expense,
+by the best dress-maker there, but which are at present slightly
+old-fashioned.
+
+But, neglectful as the Baroness is about her personal appearance, she
+has an air of great distinction when she makes up her mind to be
+presentable, and covers her short gray hair, usually flying loose about
+her ears, with a black lace cap; while Stella is always charming. She
+would be lovely in the brown robe of a monk; in her pale-blue
+cachemire, with a bunch of yellow roses on her left shoulder, directly
+below her ear, she is bewitching. Her heart throbs not a little as she
+drives with her mother in a draughty, rattling fiacre across Paris to
+the Avenue Villiers.
+
+She is not at all tired of life to-day, but, entirely forgetting how
+quickly her air-built castles fall to ruin, she is eagerly engaged
+again in similar architecture.
+
+Madame de Rohritz occupies a rather small hotel with a court-yard and
+garden. The entire household conveys the impression of distinguished
+comfort without ostentation. In the vestibule--a gem of a vestibule,
+with two ancient Japanese monsters on either side of the door of
+entrance, with Flanders tapestries embroidered in gold on the walls,
+and Oriental rugs under-foot--a servant relieves the ladies of their
+wraps.
+
+Stella immediately perceives by the way in which her mother arranges
+her hair before the mirror that, whether it be the monsters at the
+door, or the Arazzi on the wall, something has had a beneficial effect
+upon her mood,--that to-night, as is sometimes the case, her ambition
+is roused to prove that a learned woman under certain circumstances can
+be more amiable and amusing than any woman with nothing in her head
+save 'dress and the men.'
+
+In the salon, whither they are conducted by the maitre-d'hotel, a
+familiar spirit who is half a head shorter but half a head more
+dignified than the footman, they find only the master of the house. Not
+introduced, and quite unacquainted, he nevertheless advances with both
+hands extended, saying,--
+
+"It rejoices me exceedingly to welcome two of my compatriots!"
+
+"It rejoices us also," the Baroness amiably assures him.
+
+Baron Rohritz scans her with discreetly-veiled curiosity. "Why did my
+brother write that I should find the Baroness rather extraordinary at
+first? She is a charming, distinguished old lady." Aloud he says, "My
+wife made promises loud and earnest to be here in time to present me to
+the ladies; but it seems she was mistaken."
+
+"Perhaps we were too punctual," the Baroness replies, smiling.
+
+"Not at all," the Baron declares; "but my poor wife is proverbially
+unpunctual. No one has ever been able to convince her that there are
+but sixty minutes in an hour, and consequently she always tries to do
+in an afternoon that for which an entire week would hardly suffice.
+Pray warm yourselves meanwhile, ladies: here, these are the most
+comfortable places,--not too near the blaze. I have had an Austrian
+fire made for you, and have actually nearly succeeded in warming the
+entire salon. We Austrians require a higher degree of heat than these
+crazy Frenchmen; they always maintain they are never cold; they are
+quite satisfied if they can see a little picturesque blaze in the
+chimney, and they sit down close to it and thrust their hands and feet
+and heads into it, thereby giving themselves chilblains, neuralgia,
+rheumatism, and heaven knows what else; but they are never cold."
+
+Although the fire is large enough, Baron Rohritz throws on another
+log, so eager is he to bear his testimony to the affectation and
+self-conceit of the Parisians.
+
+"How wonderfully cosey and comfortable you have contrived to make your
+home here! As I entered I seemed to be breathing the air of Austria.
+Since we came to Paris I have not felt so comfortable as at present,"
+says the Baroness. If Baron Rohritz knew that since her arrival in
+Paris her time has been spent either on the top of an omnibus or in
+rather comfortless furnished lodgings, the worth of this compliment
+might be less: in happy ignorance, however, he feels extremely
+flattered, and, with a bow, rejoins,--
+
+"I am very glad our nest pleases you. The chief credit for its
+arrangement belongs to my wife. You cannot imagine how she runs herself
+out of breath to pick up pretty things. But it is like Austria here, is
+it not?"
+
+"Entirely," the Baroness assures him.
+
+"My wife is incomprehensible to me," the master of the house remarks,
+after the above interchange of civilities, glancing uneasily at the
+clock on the chimney-piece. "It is now just half an hour since I helped
+her half dead out of a fiacre, with I cannot tell how many packages. I
+trust she is not----"
+
+The portiere rustles apart. Extremely slender, bringing with her the
+odour of violets, and shrouded in a mass of black crepe de Chine and
+black lace, dying with fatigue and sparkling with vivacity, the
+Baroness Rohritz enters, fastening the clasp of a bracelet as she does
+so.
+
+"Good-evening. I beg a thousand pardons! I am excessively glad to make
+your acquaintance, Baroness Meineck. Can you forgive my ill-breeding in
+keeping you waiting on this the first evening that you have given me
+the pleasure of seeing you here? It is terrible!"
+
+"Ah, don't mention it," the Baroness replies, and, although the younger
+lady speaks German in her honour, answering in French: she is very
+proud of her French.
+
+"_Mais si, mais si_, I am most unfortunate, but innocent,--quite
+innocent. It is positively impossible to be in time in Paris. Well, and
+how do you do?" turning to Stella and lightly passing her hand over the
+girl's cheek. "You are always twitting me with my enthusiasm, Edmund:
+did I exaggerate this time?"
+
+"No, not in the least," her husband affirms: it would have been
+difficult, however, for him to make any other reply without infringing
+upon the rules of politeness.
+
+"Who made your dress for you? It is charming. And how beautifully you
+have put in your roses!--but violet suits light blue better than
+yellow. Shall we change?" And, unfastening the roses from Stella's
+shoulder, Therese Rohritz takes a bunch of dark Russian violets from
+her girdle and arranges them on Stella's gown, all with the same
+graceful, laughing, breathless amiability.
+
+To conquer all hearts, to make everybody happy, to give every one
+advice, to attend to every one's commissions, to oblige all the
+world,--this is the mania of Edgar's sister-in-law. He once declared
+that she went whirling through existence, a perfect hurricane of
+over-excellent qualities.
+
+"What are we waiting for, Therese?" the master of the house interrupts
+the flow of his wife's eloquence, in a rather impatient tone.
+
+"For Zino."
+
+"He excused himself. I put his note on your dressing-table. When he
+received your invitation he was unfortunately--_very unfortunately_,
+underscored--engaged; but he hopes to be here soon after ten," Rohritz
+explains, having rung the bell meanwhile, whereupon the maitre-d'hotel,
+throwing open the folding-doors, announces,--
+
+"_Madame la Baronne est Servie_."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                          FRENCH INFERIORITY.
+
+
+One observation Stella makes during the dinner,--namely, that married
+people apparently living happily together in Paris suffer quite as much
+from a chronic difference of opinion as those in Austria. Baron Rohritz
+and Therese do not quarrel one iota less than Jack Leskjewitsch and his
+wife.
+
+Although Rohritz, as a former diplomatist,--a career which he abandoned
+five years ago on account of a difference with his chief and an
+absolute lack of ambition,--and from long residence in Paris, speaks
+perfect French, the conversation at his special request is carried on
+in German.
+
+During dinner he incessantly makes all kinds of comparisons between
+Austria and France, of course to the disadvantage of the latter
+country. Nothing suits him in Paris; he abuses everything, from the
+perfect cooking, as it appears at his own table, to the exquisite troop
+of actors at the Francais.
+
+"I have no objection to make to the fish," he says, condescendingly. "I
+am entirely without prejudice; and when there is anything to be praised
+in France I always do it justice. But look at the game: French game is
+deplorable,--marshy, tasteless, without flavour. Even the Strasburg pie
+can be had better in Vienna. Do you not think so?"
+
+"You will be thought an actual ogre, Edmund," Therese remonstrates,
+half laughing, half vexed. "You talk of nothing to-day but food."
+
+"Perhaps so; but, as you will have observed, only from a lofty,
+strictly patriotic point of view," her husband remarks, composedly.
+
+"Of course," Therese replies. "I can, however, assure you," she says,
+turning to her guests, "that although I cannot defend the Parisians in
+all respects, in one thing they are far beyond the Viennese: although
+they do not fall behind them in cookery, they think much less of things
+to eat."
+
+"True," Edmund agrees, "and very naturally; they think less of their
+eating because they can't eat; they have no digestion. They certainly
+are a weak, degenerate race. Did you ever watch a regiment of French
+soldiers march past, ladies, either cavalry or infantry? It is quite
+pitiable, their military. Do you not think so?"
+
+The Baroness cannot help admitting that he is measurably right this
+time, and as the widow of a soldier she indulges in a hymn of praise of
+the Austrian army, thus enchanting the Baron, who before entering the
+diplomatic corps served, to complete his education, in a cavalry
+regiment.
+
+"I should really like to know why these people are in such a hurry," he
+begins again, after a while, calling attention to the speed with which
+dinner is being served. "I suppose the rascals intend to go to
+Valentino's after dinner."
+
+"Their hurry will do them no good then," Therese remarks, shrugging her
+shoulders; "they will have to serve tea later in the evening. I simply
+suppose that they take it as a personal affront that we should converse
+in a language which they do not understand."
+
+"Possibly," sighs Rohritz. "These Parisian lackeys are intolerable;
+their pretensions far outstrip our modest Austrian means. You may read
+plainly in their faces, 'I serve, 'tis true, but I adhere to the
+immortal principles of '89.' Every fellow is convinced that his period
+of servitude is only an intermezzo in his life, and that some fine day
+he shall be Duke of Persigny or Malakoff,--in short, a far grander
+gentleman than I. Am I not right, Therese?"
+
+"Perfectly," his wife asserts. "But let me ask you one question, my
+dear: if you find Paris so inferior in everything, from Strasburg pie
+to the domestics, why did you not stay in Vienna?"
+
+"Oh, that is another question,--quite a different question," Rohritz
+replies.
+
+"Ah, yes," Therese says, triumphantly. "You must know, ladies, that my
+husband's patriotism is not so ardent as would seem, but rather of a
+platonic character; he loves his country at a distance. When, five
+years ago, after we had been here some time, he gave up his career and
+wanted to go back to Vienna, I made no objections whatever, and we
+established ourselves in his beloved native city, at first only
+provisionally. At the end of six months he was so frightfully bored
+that he actually longed for Paris."
+
+Edmund dips his fingers in his finger-glass with a slightly embarrassed
+air.
+
+"That is true," he admits. "Paris is the Manon Lescaut of European
+capitals: worthless thing that she is, we can never be rid of her if
+she has once bewitched us."
+
+And as Therese prepares to rise from table he asks, "Do you object to a
+cigarette, ladies, and are you fond of children? Then, Therese, let us
+take coffee in the smoking-room, where I am sure the children are
+waiting for me."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                          PRINCE ZINO CAPITO.
+
+
+The smoking-room is a somewhat narrow apartment, with a large Oriental
+rug before the broad double windows, with very beautiful old weapons in
+a couple of stands against the wall, and with heavy antique carved
+oaken chests. The broad low arm-chairs and divans are covered with
+Oriental rugs and carpets which Rohritz, as he informs Stella, brought
+from Cairo himself.
+
+The two children, a little boy twelve years old, with tight red
+stockings and very short breeches, and a little girl hardly three, in a
+white gown, with bare legs and arms, help their mamma to serve the
+coffee. Momond takes the ladies their cups, and Baby is steady enough
+on her legs to trip after him with a face of great solemnity, carrying
+the silver sugar-bowl tightly hugged up in her arms. After she has
+happily completed her round she puts the sugar-bowl down before her
+mother, with a sigh of relief as over a difficult duty fulfilled, and
+smooths down her short, stiff skirts with a very decorous air. But when
+her father, from the other side of the room, where he is talking with
+Stella, smiles at her, she runs to him with a glad cry, forgetting all
+decorum springs into his lap, and is petted and caressed by him to his
+heart's content.
+
+"Do you know whom that picture represents, Baroness Stella?" the host
+now asks, pointing to a life-size photograph hanging beneath the
+portrait in oil of a beautiful, fair woman. Although Stella had noticed
+the photograph as soon as she entered the smoking-room, she pretends to
+have her attention attracted by it for the first time.
+
+"Yes, the likeness can still be recognized," she replies, bestowing a
+critical glance upon the picture, "although if it ever looked really
+like Baron Edgar Rohritz he must have altered very much."
+
+"Of course," says Rohritz: "the picture was taken twelve years ago.
+Edgar had it taken for our mother, just before he went to Mexico. When
+he returned to Europe, three years later, our mother was dead, and he
+was gray,--gray at twenty-seven! As he was always our mother's
+favourite, I have hung his picture below hers."
+
+"I maintain that photograph to be the handsomest head of a man which I
+know," Therese interrupts her conversation with the Baroness to
+declare. "We often dispute about it with my brother Zino, who always
+cites the Apollo Belvedere as the highest type of manly beauty----"
+
+"Because he himself resembles that arrogant fellow in the Vatican," her
+husband interposes, dryly.
+
+It is strange how constantly the elder brother recalls Baron Edgar,
+although considerably older, and by no means so distinguished in looks.
+
+Meanwhile, Therese runs on with her usual fluency:
+
+"It is an immense pity that my brother-in-law cannot make up his mind
+to marry. You really cannot imagine, ladies, the pains I have taken to
+throw the lasso over his head. Quite in vain! And such superb matches
+as I have made for him,--Marguerite de Lusignan, who has just married
+the Duke Cesarini, and the charming Marie de Galliere,--in short, the
+loveliest, wealthiest girls,--_tout ce qu'il y a de mieux_. Oddly
+enough, the mothers liked him as well as the daughters. In vain! I
+never have seen a man with so decided a distaste for matrimony as
+Edgar's. Did you chance to hear of the scheme by which he contrived in
+Graetz to rid himself of man[oe]uvring mammas?"
+
+"Yes," says Stella, very coldly: "he spread abroad a report that he had
+suddenly lost his property."
+
+"A delicious idea," Therese laughs. "Do you not think so?"
+
+Stella is silent.
+
+"It never occurred to him to originate the report," Edmund interposes
+now, rather irritably; "he was merely too lazy to contradict it. To
+hear you talk, Therese, one would suppose Edgar to be the most
+self-conceited coxcomb under the sun,--a man who spent his life in
+defending himself from the attacks of matrimonially-inclined ladies.
+But I assure you, Baroness Stella, that Edgar has not a trace of such
+nonsensical coxcombry. Perhaps you know him well enough to make your
+own estimate of his character."
+
+"I know him very superficially," Stella replies, with a shrug.
+
+"Why, I thought you spent several weeks last summer with him at
+Leskjewitsch's," says Rohritz, looking at her in surprise.
+
+Without making any reply to this remark, Stella opens and shuts her
+fan, and says, with a slight curl of her lip, "His heroic opposition
+seems overcome at last; for, as I learned lately from a letter from
+Graetz, he has just been betrothed to a certain little Countess
+Strahlheim."
+
+"Who wrote you so?" Therese cries. "That interests me immensely! Oh,
+the Machiavelli!"
+
+"I had the intelligence from a Fraeulein von Gurlichingen," says Stella.
+
+"Gurlichingen? Anastasia Gurlichingen?" asks the Baron.
+
+"You know the Gurlichingen?" Stella asks, in her turn.
+
+"Know her! Who does not know the Gurlichingen?" says Rohritz. "She is
+the most restless phantom I have ever encountered, continually
+fluttering to and fro through the world, always in the train of some
+wealthy friend who pays her expenses. It has been her specialty
+hitherto to sacrifice herself for consumptive ladies: she has haunted
+Meran, Cairo, Corfu. There was no taint of legacy-hunting in her
+conduct,--heaven forbid such a suspicion! Hm! my brother-in-law Zino
+christened her the turkey-buzzard. If you owe your piece of news to no
+more trustworthy source of information, Baroness Stella, I must take
+the liberty of doubting its correctness."
+
+"You know she is in Paris? She called upon me a little while ago, but I
+was not at home," said Therese, turning to Stella. "Have you any idea
+whom she is with now?"
+
+"With the Princess Oblonsky," Stella replies.
+
+"With the Oblonsky? Not with the former von Foehren?" husband and wife
+exclaim simultaneously.
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"What a joke!--with the Oblonsky!"
+
+Therese almost chokes with laughter.
+
+It is ten o'clock. The children have long since disappeared with their
+_bonne_; the servant has brought in the tea-equipage. There is a pause
+in the conversation, such as is apt to ensue when people have laughed
+until they are tired. The Baron puts a fresh log on the fire and rakes
+the embers together. The blaze flames and crackles; little hovering
+lights and shadows dance over the old golden-brown leather tapestries.
+Suddenly the door opens, and unannounced, with the _sans gene_ of close
+relationship, a young man enters the room, tall, slender, with a
+certain attractive audacity expressed in the lines about his mouth and
+in his eyes which puts beyond question his resemblance to the Olympian
+dandy. It is the Apollo of modern drawing-room dimensions, the Apollo
+forty-four years old, already a little gray about the temples, with a
+wrinkle or two at the corners of his eyes, in a coat of Poole's, a
+gardenia in his button-hole, his crush hat under his arm,--Prince Zino
+Capito!
+
+"Pray present me," he says, after he has greeted his sister, and Stella
+also, turning towards the Baroness.
+
+"And you already know my new star?" Therese exclaims, in surprise,
+after she has fulfilled his request.
+
+The Prince looks full at Stella, with a look peculiar to himself, a
+look in which admiration reaches the boundary of impertinence without
+crossing it,--then says, smiling,--
+
+"_Ca_, Sasa!" when he is in a good humour he calls his sister thus,
+by the name which he gave her when he was a lisping baby in the
+nursery,--"_ca_, Sasa, do you really suppose that I would have rushed
+back from Lyons simply on the strength of the enthusiastic description
+of your latest _trouvaille_ that you sent me in your note of
+invitation? No, my little sister, I am too well aware of your liability
+to acute attacks of enthusiasm not to receive your brilliant
+perorations with a justifiable mistrust. I once had the pleasure of
+seeing Mademoiselle very often, for a while," he continues, speaking
+French.
+
+"Where?--when?" asks Therese.
+
+"Three years ago, in Venice. Baron Meineck lived at the Britannia,
+where I also lodged, and Fraeulein Stella came to Venice to take care of
+him.--They were sad days for you," he says, turning to Stella, very
+gravely, and with a degree of cordiality which he can impart to his
+voice when he chooses.
+
+"And yet they were delightful days for me in spite of all," Stella
+replies, her eyes full of tears, and turning away her head.
+
+"Most certainly you can look back to that time with a contented heart,"
+he continues, in the same sympathetic tone. "I never have seen a
+daughter----" Suddenly he notices how the Baroness's glance rests upon
+him, and, becoming aware of the delicate nature of the situation, he
+finishes his sentence as best he can and tries to change the subject.
+But the Baroness has lost her equanimity: it is always intensely
+painful to her to know that she recalls to strangers the fact that her
+husband in his last illness was obliged to forego her care; Capito's
+words are like a reproof to her.
+
+"Will you have the kindness to have a fiacre called for us?" she says,
+turning to the host.
+
+Resisting all entreaties to prolong her stay, and to take another cup
+of tea, she pleads fatigue, the necessity of rising early, and so
+forth. When Capito takes leave of her he asks permission to pay his
+respects to the ladies.
+
+But the Baroness begs him to give himself no further trouble with
+regard to them, as she is scarcely ever at home,--whereupon she
+vanishes on the arm of the host, and the Prince twirls his moustache
+with a comical grimace.
+
+"What annoys you, Zino?" Edmund asks on his return to the smoking-room;
+and when the Prince enlightens him as to the extent of his lack of
+tact, and the unfortunate family history of the Meinecks, he says,--
+
+"I really do not see why Edgar considered it necessary to prepare us so
+carefully for the absurdities of the old Baroness. It is quite possible
+that she drove her husband distracted with her learning: nevertheless
+in ordinary intercourse she is very agreeable, and a very handsome old
+lady: she must have been handsomer in her time than her daughter."
+
+"Do you think so?" asks Therese. "To me Stella seems charming."
+
+"_Elle est tout betement adorable_," says Zino Capito, drinking his tea
+out of the Japanese cup his sister has just handed him. "How good your
+tea is, Sasa! in all Paris no one has such good tea as yours."
+
+"You are very suspiciously complimentary," Therese rejoins. "What do
+you want me to do for you?"
+
+"Ask me to dine soon, and ask the Meinecks," Zino replies, with his
+attractively audacious smile.
+
+"No, I will not," Therese says, resolutely.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Because, as I now see, you would do all that you could to turn
+Stella's brain. I thought you had outgrown such foolish tricks."
+
+"Hm!" says Capito.
+
+"I am going to do all that I can to marry her well," Therese declares.
+
+"Hm!" Capito says again, but in a different tone.
+
+"If you like, I will invite you to meet the Gurlichingen; she is in
+Paris at present."
+
+"Indeed! With whom is she travelling?
+
+"With----" Therese looks full at him, with mirth in her eyes,--"with
+the Oblonsky!"
+
+"Ah! Have her lungs become affected lately?" Zino asks, indifferently.
+
+"Not that I know of; but she probably covets respectability," says
+Therese.
+
+"_Ah, tiens! cela doit etre drole_. An entire change of system on
+Stasy's part, then," says Zino, putting down his teacup, and rising.
+
+"She seems to have abandoned the lucrative calling of a
+turkey-buzzard," Rohritz remarks.
+
+"Yes, and instead to have opened a laundry for the purification
+of--caps which have fallen among--among nettles, in the vicinity of
+mills.[1] Not a bad trade,--hm!"
+
+
+******************
+[Footnote 1: A play upon the French proverb, '_jeter son bonnet
+pardessus le moulin_,' as much as to say 'to lose one's reputation.']
+******************
+
+
+"Going already, Zino?"
+
+"Of course," says Zino, stretching himself and yawning as spoiled
+brothers allow themselves to do in presence of their sisters. "If you
+suppose I tore myself away from Lyons to drink tea with you, you are
+mistaken. Be good, Sasa: when will you invite the Meinecks and myself
+to dine?"
+
+Therese, moving her forefinger to and fro before her face, makes the
+Roman gesture of refusal.
+
+"Oh, very well; as you please," Zino mutters in an ill-humour.
+"Good-evening." "I wonder where I could meet her," he says, musingly,
+before lighting his cigar in the coupe that awaits him.
+
+"Strange!" Rohritz remarks to his wife; "Edgar described the young
+Meineck to me as particularly gay and amusing."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Now, for so young a creature, she seems to me particularly quiet."
+
+"What would you have? Punchinello himself would grow melancholy with
+such a life as hers."
+
+Her husband reflects for a few moments. After a while he says, "I
+wonder whether, after all, she was not a little smitten with Edgar?"
+
+"Upon what do you base your conjecture?" Therese asks, in astonishment.
+
+"She put on so extraordinarily indifferent an expression whenever he
+was mentioned."
+
+Therese laughs aloud.
+
+"What is there to laugh at?" her husband asks, rather crossly.
+
+"Forgive me, but you remind me of the Frenchman who proposed to a young
+lady through her mother, and when he was asked by her what reason he
+had to suppose that her daughter liked him, replied, 'I am quite sure
+of it, for she always leaves the room as soon as I enter it.'"
+
+"Laugh away; we shall soon see who is right. Moreover, Edgar must take
+some interest in her, or he would not have recommended her to us so
+warmly," replies Rohritz.
+
+"Bah! he recommended her to us at the express request of our common
+friend Leskjewitsch," his wife rejoins.
+
+"True; but----"
+
+"She is a child in comparison with him. He might be her father."
+
+Edmund is silent for a while, and then says, "That is true; she is a
+child,--and he is very sensible."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                            A MUSIC-LESSON.
+
+
+Following the advice of the little Italian conductor of the orchestra,
+Stella refers to him in order to procure more reasonable terms from
+Signor della Seggiola for her singing-lessons.
+
+These 'more reasonable terms' are twenty-five francs for an hour
+abbreviated at both ends, and sixty francs a month for a share in the
+singing-class,--that is, in the musical dissertations which Signor
+della Seggiola holds three times a week for six or seven pupils in a
+small room in the Gerard piano-building.
+
+For the sake of those who consider twenty-five francs an hour a
+tolerably high price for lessons, and who are inclined to regard the
+leader's recommendation as a humbug, it may be well to state that
+twenty-five francs is really a lowered price, and that dilettanti
+usually pay from thirty to thirty-five francs for a private lesson from
+della Seggiola.
+
+It is with the maestro's wife that Stella makes the business
+arrangement, since della Seggiola himself--an artist, an idealist, a
+child--understands nothing about money. He evidently labours under the
+delusion that he gives the lessons for nothing, since he does not take
+the slightest pains to give his scholars an honest equivalent in
+valuable instruction for their twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five
+francs.
+
+As we already know, Stella is tolerably familiar with the
+singing-teachers of many lands: she knows that, as is the case also
+with dentists, they all abuse one another and testify the same horror
+at the misdeeds of their predecessors, declaring with the same tragic
+shake of the head that it will be necessary to begin with the A, B,
+C,--that is, with Concone's solfeggi, and that it is indispensable for
+the scholar that she should procure the work upon the art of singing
+with which the new teacher, as well as his predecessor, has enriched
+musical literature. Stella already possesses five exhaustive works upon
+the 'Bel Canto,' 'L'Art lyrique,' 'L'Art du Chant,' and so forth; each
+cost twenty francs and contains a more or less valuable collection of
+solfeggi. Some of these volumes are adorned with the portrait of the
+author, others have prefaces in which some famous man, such as Rossini,
+for example, recommends the work to the public as something
+extraordinary, something destined by its intrinsic merit to outlast the
+Pyramids.
+
+Delia Seggiola's work differs from all these clumsy compositions.
+Adorned neither with the portrait of the author nor with a preface by a
+celebrity, it displays upon its first page the profile of a human being
+cut in half,--an imposing proof of the maestro's anatomical knowledge,
+as well as of his close study of the physical conditions of a true
+training of the voice.
+
+The large and magnificently-bound volume contains no series of
+solfeggi, but simply some scanty, musically impossible fiorituri, or
+musical examples borrowed from other works, which swim like little
+islands in an ocean of text. As Signora della Seggiola expresses
+herself, her husband's volume is no compilation of senseless solfeggi,
+but a Bible for the lovers of song.
+
+A Bible for those who believe in della Seggiola's infallibility.
+
+At the private lessons--the maestro gives these, of course, only at his
+own home--the accompaniments are played by an ambitious young musician
+who has once been with Strakosch on a tour; in the class, Fraeulein
+Fuhrwesen accompanies, her impresario having postponed for the present
+the concert tour in South America.
+
+Della Seggiola never touches the piano himself. He is a
+broad-shouldered, jolly Italian, with a big, kindly, smiling face, and
+a black velvet cap.
+
+Without ever having possessed even a tolerably good voice, he ranked
+for a time among the distinguished singers of the world. His fine
+singing is, however, of little use to his pupils.
+
+He passes the time of the lessons chiefly in reading aloud chapters
+from his 'Bible,' while the accompanist, with unflagging enthusiasm,
+praises the wisdom of the work; then the pupil sings some trifle, della
+Seggiola meanwhile gazing at her with a solemn air, sometimes grimacing
+to show the position of the lips, or tapping alternately her throat and
+her chest, exclaiming, "_Ne serrez pas!_" or "_Soutenez! soutenez!_"
+Then he directs the pupil to rest, tells something funny, clicks with
+his tongue, throws his velvet cap into the air, and--kling-a-ling-ling
+Signora della Seggiola gives the signal that the lesson is over.
+
+The class is a rather more serious and artistic affair than the private
+lessons, from the fact that there are no different prices to be paid
+here, but that every one--with the exception of a _protege_ of Signora
+della Seggiola's, a barytone from Florence, who pays nothing--pays as
+in an omnibus the same sixty francs a month, whether the class consist
+of thirty or only three persons.
+
+And the company reminds one somewhat of an omnibus. Against the
+background of usual shabbiness one or two brilliant social stars stand
+forth, making one wonder how they came there. It can hardly be asserted
+that even here among the disciples of della Seggiola, the only true
+prophet of his art, any great progress in singing is made. During the
+six weeks for which Stella has now belonged to the class it has been
+singing the same thing, only with less and less voice; that is all the
+difference.
+
+Condemned by the formation of his throat, which is extraordinarily ill
+adapted to song, to spare the organ, della Seggiola never allows one of
+his faithful disciples to sing one natural, healthy note, but condemns
+them also to a constant mezzo-voce which cannot but contract the
+throat.
+
+Thus artificially restrained, Stella's warm rich voice diminishes with
+extraordinary rapidity. When she complains to the maestro that this is
+so, he remarks that it is a very good sign, her great fault being that
+she has too much voice, and only when she has lost it entirely can the
+cultivation of a really _bel canto_ begin.
+
+This astounding assertion gives Stella food for reflection, and it
+occurs to her to-day as she sits at the piano preparing for the
+class-lesson and finds that two of her notes break as she sings the
+scale.
+
+"Della Seggiola ought to be pleased with my progress," she says to
+herself, with some bitterness, and her heart beats hard as the
+constantly-recurring question arises in her mind, "If I should really
+lose my voice----? But where is the use of thinking of it?" she answers
+herself, with a shrug. The clock on the chimney-piece, the one with the
+manchineel-tree, strikes a quarter of ten. "It is high time to go," the
+girl says aloud. Slipping on the still handsome sealskin jacket which
+her father had given her five years before for a Christmas-present, she
+hurries along the various thronged streets, broad and narrow, through
+the pale-yellow January sunshine, to her destination.
+
+The 'hall' in the Gerard piano-warehouse, Rue du Mail, where della
+Seggiola holds his classes, is hardly more spacious than an ordinary
+room in Berlin or Vienna, and, being partly filled with pianos sewed up
+in linen, leaves something to be desired from an acoustic point of
+view. The lesson has already begun when Stella enters. Fraeulein
+Fuhrwesen, in her tassel-bedecked water-proof, is seated at the piano,
+upon the lid of which the 'Bible' lies open. Della Seggiola, resting
+his right hand upon its pages, and gesticulating with his left, is
+delivering an inspiring discourse upon the art of song, while a tall,
+sallow young man, with very little hair upon his head, but all the more
+upon his face, is awaiting with ill-disguised impatience the moment
+when he can burst into song.
+
+This young man's name is Meyer (pronounced Meyare): he is clerk in a
+banking-house, and is studying for the stage.
+
+A second barytone, a young Italian, is also waiting with longing for
+his turn. He is the star of the class, a Florentine, who has wandered
+to Paris with his two sisters, who regularly come to the class with
+him. They are sallow and elderly, wear very large Rembrandt hats,
+which, as they privately inform Stella, they purchased in the Temple,
+sit on each side of their brother, and keep up a constant nod of
+encouragement.
+
+In strict seclusion from the young men, and guarded by a gray-haired
+duenna, across whose threadbare brown sacque she gaily ogles the
+barytone from Florence, sits a dishevelled little soprano, the daughter
+of a diva and a journalist.
+
+Of course she has no idea of going on the stage; she speaks with horror
+of the theatre, and thinks a dramatic career not at all _comme il
+faut_.
+
+An elderly Englishwoman, quite copper-coloured, with very long teeth
+and the figure of a tallow dip, seems to be of a different opinion. She
+is just confessing in very problematical French to the barytone from
+Florence how much she repents not having voice enough '_pour remplir un
+opera_,' and her eyes fill with tears.
+
+Natalie Lipinski has not yet arrived.
+
+With a pleasant greeting to the two sisters of the barytone, and to the
+crazy Miss Frazer, Stella passes as quietly as possible to her place.
+
+After della Seggiola has ended his discourse, and Monsieur Meyare has
+finished his '_Dolcessi perduti_,' Miss Frazer sings the waltz from
+'Traviata' transposed a fifth lower than the original key, breathing
+very loud, and singing very low. In the middle of it she stops short,
+lays her red hand, covered to the knuckles with a knitted wristlet,
+upon her heart, and sighs.
+
+"What is it?" asks della Seggiola, not without a certain impatience.
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"This aria is so deeply affecting," sighs the Englishwoman; "it always
+gives me palpitation of the heart."
+
+"That is very unfortunate," says della Seggiola, taking a pinch of
+snuff. "Pray consult a physician; he will prescribe digitalis."
+
+"Oh, the doctor could not help me," Miss Frazer asserts, wagging her
+head to and fro with enthusiasm. "My nervous system is too highly
+strung. If my voice were only stronger I should certainly have a
+_succes_ upon the stage,--_parce que je suis tres-passionnee_."
+
+Della Seggiola bites his lip. At this moment the door opens, Natalie
+Lipinski enters, and behind her--Stella can hardly believe her
+eyes--Zino Capito!
+
+"Permit me to present to you my cousin, Prince Capito, Signor
+della Seggiola," says Natalie, in her fluent but hard-sounding
+Russian-French. "He hopes to be allowed to profit by your
+instructions."
+
+Of course the lesson is interrupted. Miss Frazer's eyes, which
+always remind one more or less of a melancholy-minded rabbit, and
+which now wear a very sympathetic air, rest with benevolence upon the
+Prince, who offers della Seggiola his hand with the _aplomb_ for which
+he is justly celebrated throughout Europe, hurriedly thanks him for
+the great pleasure he has given him by his art, and prays beforehand
+for indulgence and patience, since he is, as he maintains, a
+beginner,--only a beginner.
+
+Natalie conscientiously presents him to the class, blundering, of
+course, with all the names.
+
+He bows stiffly, looks directly over the gentlemen's heads, scans the
+ladies with a curious glance, and then goes directly to Stella, beside
+whom he takes his place, after bowing to her with the most attractive
+mixture of courtesy and deference. Without being deterred by Miss
+Frazer's starting off with her transposed song and getting through as
+much of it as asthma and palpitation of the heart will permit, he
+begins:
+
+"I made an attempt to see you the day after meeting you at my sister's,
+but, unfortunately, in vain. Did you get my card?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was so very sorry not to find the ladies at home. Might I be
+admitted some evening?"
+
+"I will ask mamma; but----"
+
+"And how have you amused yourself meanwhile?"
+
+"Oh, I have been very gay this week; Madame de Rohritz took me with her
+once to the theatre and once to the Bois de Boulogne."
+
+"And when Therese does not take you out a little do you devote your
+entire time to historical studies and to your singing?"
+
+"Sometimes I sit about in the Tuileries,--I have made the acquaintance
+of an old governess, who chaperons me,--and sometimes I go to the
+Louvre, which I know as perfectly as ever a guide in Paris."
+
+Is it by mere chance that just at this point of the conversation, which
+is carried on in an undertone, Fraeulein Fuhrwesen turns and stares at
+the Prince and Stella?
+
+Meanwhile, it is Natalie's turn to sing. Her song is the grand cavatina
+from 'I Puritani,' '_Qui la voce sua soave!_'
+
+Natalie is an odd little person, short, slender, undeveloped as to
+figure, with a face rather too sallow, but with regular delicate
+features and dazzling teeth. With a fanatical enthusiasm for art and a
+determination to go upon the stage she combines a fortune of some
+millions of roubles, and, what is in still more comical contrast with
+her proposed career, a strict unbending sense of propriety, far
+transcending the prudery of the most English of Englishwomen,--not that
+shy sense of propriety which is always on the defensive, but that which
+is quick to look down with aggressive contempt upon any infringement of
+the rules of decorum.
+
+Too well bred to speak when a lady whom he knows, were she a hundred
+times his cousin, is singing, Zino listens with exemplary attention to
+the Bellini cavatina, not indeed without a merry twinkle of the eye now
+and then.
+
+Natalie's voice is rather shrill, her Italian accent harsh; her
+rendering of the impassioned aria is strictly confined to following the
+musical directions, _p.p_., _cresc_., _ritard_., and so forth; even at
+the point where the inspiration of the love-stricken Elvira culminates
+in the words '_Vien' ti posa--vien' ti posa sul mio cor!_' she never
+ceases to beat the time with her right hand.
+
+After this brilliant outburst della Seggiola interrupts her. The
+Fuhrwesen lifts her hands from the keys, and Natalie looks inquiringly
+at the maestro, who takes a pinch of snuff and shakes his head.
+
+"_Tres-bien, mon enfant_," it is needless to say that this
+familiar address is very little to the taste of the haughty
+Russian,--"_tres-bien, mon enfant_; you sing in excellent time,
+but you must try to infuse animation into your style. Fancy the
+situation,--half crazy with love and longing, you are calling out into
+the night, 'Ah, come--come to my heart!' You must sing that with--how
+shall I express it?--with more conviction, thus:"
+
+The Fuhrwesen drums the accompaniment, and della Seggiola, stretching
+out his arms like angels' wings, throws back his head a little, and
+warbles, '_Qui la voce!_'
+
+Estimate as you please his method of instruction, all who still find
+delight in the old Italian traditions must admit his art in singing.
+
+And Prince Zino--a musical Epicurean to his finger-tips, rejecting
+everything clumsy and indigestible in music,--Prince Zino, for whom
+Mozart is the only god of music and Rossini is his prophet--strokes his
+moustache, delighted, and calls "Bravo!" and della Seggiola bows.
+
+The lesson continues to be quite interesting.
+
+Signor Trevisiani, the barytone from Florence, sings something very
+depressing, with the refrain,--
+
+
+           'Maladetto sulla terra,
+            Condannato nel ceil sard.'
+
+
+The little soprano sings, '_Plaisir d'amour_,' and Zino perfectly,
+gravely, goes through a scale, swelling the notes, during which two sad
+facts are brought to light,--first, that he is the third barytone in
+the class,--della Seggiola had hoped for a tenor,--and, secondly, that
+he cannot read by note. Della Seggiola, however, praises the charming
+timbre of his voice, and asks if he may not send him a teacher to
+correct his defective reading; whereupon Fraeulein Fuhrwesen declares
+herself ready to give the Prince lessons. He pretends not to hear this
+heroic proposition, seeming not even to perceive her; whereby he makes
+a mortal enemy of that extremely sensitive and irritable person.
+
+The glory of the class is the closing performance,--the famous duet
+between Don Giovanni and Zerlina, rendered by Signor Trevisiani and
+Natalie Lipinski.
+
+It would be difficult to imagine a more lugubrious Don Giovanni than
+the young man from Florence. He is freshly shaven, perhaps in honour of
+his part; his cheeks are covered with red scratches, like those of a
+German youth who bears about in his face the record of his bravery; his
+hair, artistically dishevelled about his forehead and ears, falls over
+his coat-collar at the back of his neck. Except for a grass-green
+cravat, he is dressed entirely in black, like the page in 'Marlbrook;'
+his costume, evidently provincial, comes from the same quarter of Paris
+that has produced his sisters' hats,--the Temple.
+
+Much intimidated by his haughty Zerlina, his throat contracts so that
+his voice, naturally fine and resonant, comes from his dry lips hoarse
+and miserably thready. Although Natalie sings, as ever, in faultless
+time, the notes that should be in unison are far from sounding so,
+whereupon della Seggiola advises the singers to take each other's
+hands. Mademoiselle Lipinski edges away still farther from her Don
+Giovanni, and extends to him her finger-tips.
+
+Della Seggiola makes them repeat the duo three times, does his best to
+make it go smoothly, gently entreats Zerlina to be more coquettish,
+orders Don Giovanni to be more seductive. In vain. Zerlina draws down
+the corners of her mouth and looks at the wall; Don Giovanni scratches
+his ear. The duo sounds worse and worse. Much irritated at this
+melancholy result, which she ascribes entirely to Signor Trevisiani's
+awkwardness, Natalie at last says crossly to the young Florentine, "I
+beg you not to torment me any more: it will never do!" Then across her
+shoulder to her cousin she explains, impatiently, "Zino, Signor
+Trevisiani is hoarse; you and I used to sing the duo together. Come,
+try it."
+
+"If there is time," Zino says, with amiable readiness, taking his place
+beside his cousin.
+
+There is really no time for it, as della Seggiola would have informed
+any one save the Prince. Twelve o'clock has struck, but he does not
+mention that fact to Zino. Hungry and resigned, he sits down beside the
+piano, his hands clasped upon his stomach, his eyes fixed upon the tips
+of his boots stretched out before him, prepared to endure the blessed
+duo for the fourth time. But what is this? He listens eagerly, all
+present listen, all eyes are riveted upon the Prince, from whose lips
+there flows such melody as we expect only from the greatest Italian
+singers.
+
+Without paying any further attention to Zerlina, della Seggiola
+inquires at the close of the duo,--
+
+"Do you sing the serenade also?"
+
+"_A peu pres_," says Zino, whereupon the Fuhrwesen strikes the first
+notes of the accompaniment, and he sings it.
+
+The singers of the new high-art school, the interpreters of Wagner,
+curse out the notes at their auditors; Prince Zino smiles them at his
+hearers, and the strong infusion of irony in his smile only heightens
+the effect of his style.
+
+Erect but unstudied in attitude, his hands in the pockets of his
+jacket, his head slightly thrown back, he is the veritable
+personification of the gay, thoughtless _bon-vivant_, Mozart's Don
+Giovanni as the master created him.
+
+As he ends, Miss Frazer, bathed in tears, rushes up to him with both
+hands held out, exclaiming, "_Merci! merci!_"
+
+Stella, laughing, claps applause, and Signor Trevisiani gazes at him as
+if he longed to learn his art. But della Seggiola asks,--
+
+"Where did you learn to sing, mon Prince?"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"From no one."
+
+"That's right!" exclaims Seggiola, forgetting all humbug in genuine
+artistic enthusiasm. "For, between ourselves be it said, singing is
+never taught."
+
+And when the Prince laughs, and hopes on the contrary to profit much
+from the art of the maestro, the latter replies, with the inborn
+courtesy of his nation,--
+
+"If you will kindly help me to reveal to my class here the beauty of
+song, you shall always be welcome, mon Prince. I can teach you
+nothing."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The lesson is over. Zino helps Stella and his cousin to put on their
+wraps, takes leave of della Seggiola with his brilliant smile and
+cordial pressure of the hand, of the rest with a very brief nod, and
+leaves the room with his two special ladies.
+
+"A charming man, that Principe Capito," says della Seggiola, rubbing
+his hands delightedly. "And he can sing like Mario in his best days. I
+used to give his sister lessons."
+
+"I have met him before in Vienna," Fraeulein Fuhrwesen mutters. "He is
+an Italian, to be sure, but his arrogance he learned in Austria."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                          A NEW ACQUAINTANCE?
+
+
+The lesson at an end, the members of della Seggiola's class have no
+more acquaintance with one another than have people who have travelled
+together by railway after they have left the train. The soprano with
+her slovenly duenna in a long French cachemire shawl, the Italian with
+his two sisters, one on each arm, all fly apart like bits of lead from
+an exploding shell.
+
+A saucy smile about his mouth, Capito walks beside the two girls; he
+softly hums to himself '_La ci darem la mano!_'
+
+"You sang well, Zino," Natalie remarks, after a while. "Della Seggiola
+was absolutely enthusiastic."
+
+"What good did it do me?" says Zino, shrugging his shoulders. "It gave
+him a reason for politely turning me away."
+
+"He was afraid you might agitate Miss Frazer: she suffers already from
+her heart," Stella says, with her usual audacity in alluding to
+uncomfortable topics.
+
+"On the whole, della Seggiola was right," Natalie declares: "it would
+not have been becoming for you to join the class."
+
+"'Tis odd how often the pleasantest things in this world are
+unbecoming," Zino murmurs.
+
+"Do you really think it would have been so very pleasant to hear us
+practising away at the same things twice a week?" Stella asks, gaily.
+
+"Without giving him time to reply, Natalie begins to cross-examine him
+upon his impressions of della Seggiola's method of instruction.
+
+"What do you think of him as a teacher?" she asks.
+
+"He sings delightfully," Zino replies, somewhat vaguely.
+
+"Yes, but he is too lax as a teacher; he is not strict enough,--does
+not suit to their capacity the tasks he imposes upon his pupils."
+
+"Do you think so?" says Zino. "On the contrary, I thought he exacted
+far too much of his scholars' capacity."
+
+"How so?" Natalie asks, rather offended.
+
+"He required you to be coquettish, and that fellow--what was his
+name?--Trappenti--to be seductive. Rather too difficult a task for both
+of you, I should think," says the Prince.
+
+Natalie frowns:
+
+"I thought della Seggiola's remarks to-day highly unbecoming."
+
+"Of course, when you were singing a love-song, to require you to
+imagine yourself in the place of the singer,--_c'est de la derniere
+inconvenance_. Moreover, it was exacting more than you were capable of
+performing,--that is, so far as I know." And, with a quick turn of the
+conversation which would be quite inexcusable in any one else, he looks
+her in the face, and asks with a light laugh, as if the question
+concerned something infinitely comical, "Do tell us,--it will interest
+Baroness Stella too, I am sure,--you are twenty-five years old----"
+
+"Twenty-six," Natalie corrects him.
+
+"Twenty-six, then. Were you ever in love?"
+
+To the Prince's no small surprise, Natalie turns away her head at this
+question, and, blushing to the very roots of her hair, mutters angrily
+between her set teeth, "You are intolerable to-day!"
+
+"Ah, indeed!" says Prince Zino, with a merry twinkle of his eyes. "It
+must be with one of the lithographic portraits hanging in the corridor
+in your home at Jekaterinovskoe,--Orlow, or Potemkin. By the way, 'tis
+a great pity you blush so seldom, Natalie: it becomes you charmingly."
+
+At the next street-corner Stella's and Natalie's ways separate, to the
+great vexation of the Prince, seeing that he too must of course take
+his leave of the beautiful Austrian. But, if he can no longer enjoy the
+pleasure of talking with Stella, he resolves to please himself by still
+keeping her in sight. Instead of remaining with his cousin and quietly
+going his own way, he decides to walk along the same street with
+Stella, on the other side of the way.
+
+Natalie, who understands his little man[oe]uvre perfectly, looks after
+him before turning her corner, and shakes her head. "I wonder how many
+times he has been in love before?" she thinks. "Poor little star! she
+is very pretty. I trust she may be more sensible than I."
+
+Meanwhile, Zino and Stella walk leisurely along on opposite sides of
+the Rue des Petits-Champs.
+
+"How well she walks! what a fine carriage she has!" he murmurs, never
+losing sight of her. "Her movements have such an easy grace, and now
+and then a dreamy, gliding rhythm about them; 'tis music for the
+eyes. And then such colour,--the fair face with its black eyes and red
+lips, the gold of the hair setting off the exquisite glow of the
+complexion,--she is enchanting!"
+
+Zino is one of those men whose sensuality is refined and idealized by
+the admixture of a purely artistic and aesthetic appreciation of the
+beautiful. The worship of the beautiful is, as he is fond of declaring,
+his own special, private religion; the paroxysms of enthusiasm which
+this worship was apt to cause in him in former years have long since
+grown rarer and rarer. But to-day he is distinctly conscious of the
+slow approach of an attack.
+
+"Bah! it will pass away," he says to himself, "as all such attacks do;
+it can lead to nothing. But all the same she is bewitching!"
+
+Thus both go their ways,--he with his eyes, quite intoxicated with
+beauty, riveted upon her face and figure,--she, as he is rather annoyed
+to perceive, so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be utterly oblivious
+of his vicinity. Between them, around them, swarms Parisian life, with
+its bustle and noise; on the pavements pass neat grisettes by twos and
+threes, their smooth hair uncovered, either coming from or going to
+breakfast, men with dirty grayish-white blouses, servant-girls in white
+caps, Englishwomen with long teeth, and Parisians of all kinds,
+recklessly pressing on towards some aim known to themselves only; in
+the middle of the street there is a hurly-burly of every kind of
+vehicle, from little hand-carts, laden with fish, flowers, oranges, or
+vegetables, and pushed by women with bent backs, to omnibuses as
+big as small houses, their tops reaching above the shop-windows, and
+dragged with difficulty by the strongest horses. Here and there some
+one is running after one or other of these conveyances, a breathless
+day-governess, helped up by both hands to the back platform by the
+conductor, or a notary with a leather wallet under his arm, who climbs
+to the top with the agility of a monkey.
+
+These tops are crowded. Beside respectable business-men with
+clean-shaved cheeks and thick sausage-like moustaches are seated all
+sorts of Bohemians, half-students, half-artists, pale and thin, with
+melancholy eyes in faces weary with cheap pleasures, a strange and
+genuinely Parisian species of human being, always eager for any
+variety, be it a ball at Bulliers or the overthrow of a government, a
+restless, excitable, shallow, sparkling crowd, which might be called
+the oxygen of Paris in contrast with its hydrogen. And beside the huge
+city omnibus there toil, slowly, heavily-laden carts to which are
+harnessed long trains of huge white Norman steeds, with blue sheepskins
+upon their backs and bells around their necks, bells which have a
+rustic simple sound amid all the demoniac clatter of Paris, like the
+clear voices of children heard in some Bacchanalian revel. Tall, sturdy
+Normans in white, flapping broad-brimmed hats walk beside them, shaking
+their heads as they look down upon the wealthy degradation and the
+sordid misery of the filigree population of Paris.
+
+The January sun shines above it all. There in the fresh cold air is an
+odour of oranges, fish, and flowers. Stella stops beside a flower-cart
+to buy a bunch of violets. Zino pauses to watch her. Amid the noise of
+the street he cannot understand what she says, but through the roar of
+the mid-day crowd, the loud pulsation of the great city stronger at
+this hour than at any other, he distinguishes brief detached notes of
+her gentle bird-like voice. How cordial the smile she has just bestowed
+upon the flower-girl!
+
+"If she smiled at me like that I should give her the entire cart-full
+of flowers. I wonder if I might send her a bouquet to the 'Negroes?'"
+
+Stella, with a charming shake of the head, has just taken out her
+purse, when a lumbering omnibus interposes between her and Zino's
+admiring gaze. The omnibus is followed by a cart, then by another, and
+another. At last the view is once more uninterrupted; but where is
+Stella? There she stands, pale, agitated, her eyes cast down, beside a
+tall, thin, consumptive-looking woman in shabby black, leading by the
+hand a little girl,--a woman with golden hair, and features in which,
+pinched and worn though they be by many a bitter experience, a striking
+likeness may be traced to Stella's beautiful profile.
+
+"Where did she pick up that acquaintance?" the Prince asks himself; but
+before he can decide where and when he has seen that woman before,
+Stella and the stranger have vanished in a little confectioner's shop.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                           FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA.
+
+
+However recklessly a woman may have trifled with her reputation in her
+youth, tossing it about as a thing of naught, there is sure to come a
+time in the progress of years when the first wrinkle appears, and
+instantly a careful search is made for the lost article. Then she needs
+a friend who shall smooth it out and polish it up and return it to
+her,--a friend who believes in its inherent spotlessness and will do
+her best to convince others of the same.
+
+This office Stasy has undertaken to perform for the Princess Oblonsky.
+And what is to be her reward for her efforts? Delicious food, exquisite
+lodgings and service in apartments fairy-like in their appointments,
+numerous presents, and altogether very considerate treatment, with the
+exception of a few outbreaks of temper, unavoidable with such women as
+the Princess.
+
+From all which it may be clearly perceived that the position of the
+Oblonsky is far from being as good as it was upon her husband's death,
+three years ago, or she would scarcely covet at so high a price the
+support of such a person as Anastasia.
+
+She certainly has been most unfortunate,--poor Princess Sophie. When,
+three years ago, she returned from Petersburg a widow and possessed of
+a colossal fortune, she hoped to obliterate all memories of former
+irregularities by a marriage with Prince Zino Capito. But Zino did not
+second her views. Two months after the death of the Prince he scarcely
+spoke to her.
+
+It was during the following winter that Sophie Oblonsky committed the
+serious 'imprudence' by which she lost forever her social position. At
+the roulette-table in San Carlo she made the acquaintance of a young
+Hungarian who was presented to her as a Comte de Bethenyi. He was
+young, ardent, wore picturesque fur collars and jackets which well
+became his handsome gypsy face, flung his money about everywhere, and
+played the piano. Sophie Oblonsky was always sensitive to music. The
+picturesque Hungarian inspired her with an interest such as none but a
+disappointed woman of forty can experience. In dread of compromising
+herself, she consented to marry him, and they were betrothed, whereupon
+suddenly various Esterhazys and Zichys of her acquaintance appeared at
+San Carlo, and in the casino of the place met the Princess upon her
+lover's arm, bowed to her, and honoured her companion with a very odd
+stare. After they had passed, Sophie heard them laugh.
+
+In an hour all Monaco knew that the Princess Oblonsky had betrothed
+herself to a fencing-master from Klausenburg, who shortly before had
+won a prize of ten thousand marks in the Saxon lottery. That same
+evening Caspar Bethenyi risked his last thousand francs on number
+twenty-nine,--perhaps because the twenty-ninth of January was his
+birthday,--and lost. The following night he put a bullet through his
+brains.
+
+The correspondent of 'Figaro' wrote an amusing article upon the
+episode, and the Princess Oblonsky was henceforth impossible: she had
+made herself ridiculous.
+
+The world found the affair extremely comical,--so comical that there
+was a strong admixture of contempt even in the compassion accorded to
+the poor fencing-master, who had signed his name simply Caspar Bethenyi
+in the strangers' book, and who, it was afterwards discovered, had
+accepted rather unwillingly the rank bestowed upon him by waiters and
+journalists.
+
+Since this had occurred, two years before, the Oblonsky had tried in
+vain to regain a footing in society. Considerable surprise was
+expressed that when thus exiled from the 'world' of western Europe she
+did not retire to Petersburg; but she probably had her own reasons for
+not doing so.
+
+Another woman in her place, with her immense means, might have let go
+all she had lost and lived gaily from day to day. But she was naturally
+slow, and with the luxurious tendencies of her temperament were mingled
+sentimentality and a certain liability to sporadic attacks of a sense
+of propriety. She grasped at everything that could make her at one with
+the world.
+
+She had set her heart upon a respectable marriage, becoming her rank.
+In the far distance Edgar von Rohritz hovered before her as the St.
+George who was destined to slay for her the dragon of prejudice.
+
+Certain people, especially women, understand how to touch up their
+reminiscences with the same artistic skill that a photographer expends
+upon his pictures, so that very little remains of the fact as it was
+originally projected upon the memory.
+
+Sophie Oblonsky erased, in this touching up of her reminiscences,
+everything that she disliked. She talked so much of her virtue that she
+finally came to believe in it.
+
+Meanwhile, she behaved with perfect propriety and was fearfully bored.
+
+It is five o'clock, and the heavy curtains before the windows of her
+drawing-room are already drawn close. The lamps shed a mild, agreeable
+light. A lackey has just brought in the tea. Upon a pretty Japanese
+stand, beside the silver samovar, sparkle the glass decanters of
+cordial and all the modern accompaniments of afternoon tea.
+
+It is the Princess's reception-day.
+
+That she entirely ignores in her intercourse with Stasy her own loss of
+position, that she ascribes her seclusion solely to a voluntary
+retirement from a hollow world which disgusts her, there is as little
+need of saying as that Stasy, without a word from the Princess to
+induce her to do so, feels herself under obligations to introduce
+Sophie to a new social circle.
+
+This 'circle' consists as yet but of a few wealthy Americans, just
+arrived in Paris, and of--artists.
+
+The Princess has a special liking for artists; they are, she maintains,
+so much fresher, so much quicker and pleasanter as companions, than her
+equals in rank, of whose wearisome shallowness she has many a story to
+tell. And her special favourite among these is the pianist Fuhrwesen.
+Why, good heavens, the only occupation which really interests the
+Princess at this time is the search for some private irregularity in
+the lives of women of extreme apparent respectability; and in these
+investigations the pianist is always ready to assist her.
+
+Dressed with great taste but with severe simplicity, holding a small
+Japanese hand-screen between her face and the glow from the fire, the
+Princess is leaning back in a low chair near the hearth, complaining of
+headache, and hoping that there will not be as many people here to-day
+as on her last reception-day.
+
+A quarter of an hour--yes, half an hour--passes, and no one appears.
+Stasy is hungry; the _foie gras_ sandwiches are very tempting, but to
+partake of one would be a tacit admission that there is no hope of a
+visitor, and she must not be the first to confess the fact.
+
+"Poor Boissy!"--this is a painter whom the Oblonsky has taken under her
+protection,--"poor Boissy! probably he cannot summon up the courage to
+come; he is ashamed of his wife. Ah, he really cannot dream how
+considerate I am for artists' wives. It is a theory of mine that it is
+our duty, as ladies, to educate artists' wives for their husbands. I
+know it is not usual to receive them; but that seems to me very petty,
+and I hate all pettiness."
+
+Another quarter of an hour passes. Stasy is faint with hunger.
+
+"One of the Fanes must be ill," she observes, "or they would certainly
+be here. I must find out what----" But Sophie interrupts her
+impatiently.
+
+"Pour me out a cup of tea," she orders her.
+
+The tea is cold and bitter from waiting so long for guests who do not
+arrive. Sophie finds it detestable, and reproaches Stasy therefor.
+
+Stasy consoles herself for her friend's capricious injustice by taking
+two glasses of cordial, three sandwiches, and half a dozen little
+cakes.
+
+Meanwhile, Sophie observes, with a yawn, "I cannot tell you how glad I
+am that no one came. People bore me so. I revel in my solitude. And to
+think that I must shortly resign it! I must call upon our ambassadress
+shortly."
+
+In spite of her wonderful degree of _aplomb_, Anastasia at this point
+of the conversation is silent and looks rather confused.
+
+"You saw her in the Bois lately," the Oblonsky continues, in a somewhat
+irritated tone.
+
+"Yes; you pointed her out to me."
+
+"Well, you must have noticed how stiffly she bowed. No wonder. She must
+have known how long I have been in Paris without calling upon her."
+
+"I have always told you that you carry to excess your passion for
+solitude," Stasy chirps. "It is easy to go too far in such a
+preference."
+
+"Ah, the world is odious to me," Sophie declares.
+
+The bell outside is heard to ring at this moment.
+
+"Insufferable!" Sonja exclaims. "I trust no one is coming to disturb us
+now!" And, glancing at the mirror over the chimney-piece, she adjusts
+her _jabot_ and a curl above her forehead.
+
+The lackey flings wide the folding doors and announces, "Mademoiselle
+Urwese,"--the French abbreviation, apparently, for Fuhrwesen; for, even
+more copper-coloured than usual, in consequence of the biting north
+wind outside, with her hair blowing about her eyes, a kind of
+reddish-yellow turban upon her head, and wearing her tassel-bedecked
+water-proof, the pianist enters.
+
+"How nice of you! This is really charming, my dear Fuhrwesen!" exclaims
+Sophie, hastily concealing her disappointment. "This is my day, but I
+closed my doors for all strangers,--absolutely for all," the
+imaginative Princess asseverates; then, pausing suddenly, she glances
+uneasily at Stasy. But Stasy has long since learned to let such
+rhapsodies pass her by without so much as the quiver of an eyelash: her
+face is motionless, and the Oblonsky goes on fluently: "You were the
+only one whom Baptiste had orders to admit. Take off your wraps: you
+will stay and dine, of course, dear, will you not?"
+
+"With your kind permission," Fraeulein Fuhrwesen says, submissively,
+kissing the Oblonsky's hand.
+
+"And now sit here by the fire and warm yourself. Anastasia,"--this is
+drawled over her shoulder,--"pour out a glass of cordial for her.--You
+can have nothing more, my dear; I cannot permit you to spoil your
+appetite. We are going to have an extremely fine dinner."
+
+"Your Highness is really too kind," says the pianist. "Ah, how
+intensely becoming that green gown is to you! Did you hear Prince
+Olary's description of you?--'The Venus of Milo, dressed by Worth.' Was
+it not capital?" And the pianist gazes at the Oblonsky with
+enthusiastic admiration.
+
+"Yes, yes, you are in love with me, my dear: 'tis an old story," the
+Princess says, with a laugh. "But now tell us something new: you always
+have a budget of news. Any fresh scandal in the Faubourg?"
+
+"Let me think," Fraeulein Fuhrwesen says, reflectively. "What news have
+I heard? _A propos_--yes, I remember; but it will shock your Highness
+terribly. I really had no idea of such depravity in girls of what is
+called the best standing."
+
+"Oh, tell us, tell us!" the Princess urges her.
+
+"I must first be sure that I shall not wound Fraeulein Anastasia," the
+pianist remarks, discreetly. "Are you not in some way related, or a
+very near friend, to the little Meineck, Fraeulein von Gurlichingen?"
+
+"Not at all," Anastasia assures her. "I spent a couple of weeks in the
+same house with her last summer, but I had very little to say to her. I
+never liked her."
+
+"Meineck? Meineck?" says the Oblonsky, with lifted eyebrows. "Is not
+she the young person who you told me fell so desperately in love with
+Rohritz?"
+
+Anastasia nods.
+
+"The young lady apparently possesses an inflammable heart," Fraeulein
+Fuhrwesen remarks, contemptuously: "it already throbs for another,--for
+Prince Lorenzino Capito."
+
+The Princess becomes absorbed in contemplation of her nails; Anastasia
+observes, "That would seem to be rather an aimless enthusiasm. Pray how
+did you learn anything about this affair?"
+
+Fraeulein Fuhrwesen draws a deep breath: "You know I play the
+accompaniments at della Seggiola's class. Stella Meineck has
+attended it for two months. The company is rather mixed, especially
+so far as the men are concerned. Who do you suppose made his appearance
+to join the class the day before yesterday? It really is too
+ridiculous,--pretending to want to learn to sing! Prince Lorenzo
+Capito."
+
+"You don't say so!" Stasy ejaculates.
+
+"Yes, Prince Capito," the narrator repeats. "He stares past all the
+others, takes a seat beside little Meineck, and talks with her during
+the entire lesson. What do you think of that, ladies?"
+
+Stasy sighs, and the Oblonsky says,--
+
+"_C'est bien extraordinaire!_ I certainly should not have thought that
+so insignificant a person could have inspired Capito with the slightest
+interest."
+
+"I know Prince Capito," the visitor goes on: "I met him in Vienna at
+the Countess Thierstein's. His reputation, so far as women are
+concerned, is disgraceful. Any girl is good enough to help him while
+away an hour or two."
+
+"Yes, he is a terrible creature," the Princess sighs. "I really had no
+idea of it. He used to be a good deal at our house while my husband was
+alive. Of course he never presumed with me."
+
+"_Cela va sans dire_," exclaims Stasy.
+
+"Of course, you know me: to friendly intercourse--yes, I do not pretend
+to more reserve than I possess--even to a slight flirtation with an
+interesting man--I have no objection; but anything beyond that
+absolutely passes my comprehension."
+
+"The little Meineck, however," Fraeulein Fuhrwesen continues, with a
+malicious smile, "does not appear to be so strict in her ideas. I
+distinctly heard her during the singing-lesson arranging a rendezvous
+in the Louvre with the Prince."
+
+"A rendezvous?" Sophie repeats, with horror. "That is indeed---- And do
+you know whether Capito kept the appointment?"
+
+"Certainly. I made sure of it," continues her informant. "The morning
+after the singing-class I had a lesson to give near the Louvre, and
+after it was over I had a little time to spare. I am perfectly familiar
+with the museum, as I often go there to visit an acquaintance of mine.
+I never look at the pictures any more, they tire me to death, but the
+Louvre is always a nice place to get warm. So I mounted the staircase,
+and lingered for a while beside the register in the Salle La Caze,
+exchanging a word or two with an Englishman who is copying a Ribera.
+Suddenly the man turned, as every man turns to look after a pretty
+girl. I turned also, and whom should I see but Mademoiselle Stella,
+with her yellow hair and her sealskin jacket! Please tell me, ladies,
+how a person so miserably poor as she is--I know all about the
+Meinecks' pecuniary circumstances, coming as I do from Zalow--can buy a
+sealskin jacket, and a beautiful one? Why, one has to save for three
+years to get a respectable water-proof."
+
+"Probably it was given to her," the Princess says, with a shrug. "But
+go on."
+
+"She went directly through the room, without looking at the pictures,
+precisely like some one who had come simply to meet some one else. I
+went up to her, and, though I cannot endure the haughty creature, I
+spoke to her: 'Ah, Baronne, how are you?' She replied curtly, looking
+past me to the right and left, and finally, observing that she could
+not stay, for she had promised to meet some one,--oh, a lady, of
+course!--walked quickly away. My time was up. I looked after her, and
+was leaving, when whom should I encounter in the Galerie d'Apollon but
+Prince Capito! I suppose any one who knows of his devotion to art can
+readily imagine why he should be in the Louvre! What do you say to such
+conduct?"
+
+"Absolutely depraved!" exclaims the Princess.
+
+"We all know whither these 'innocent meetings' in the picture-galleries
+lead," the Fuhrwesen continues. "The next thing she will pay him a
+visit in his lodgings."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" the Oblonsky laughs affectedly.
+
+"Bah! I live opposite the Prince in the Rue d'Anjou; I should not be at
+all surprised if I were to see that young lady walk into No. ---- some
+fine day."
+
+"If you do you must come and tell us instantly!" exclaims the Princess,
+taking her visitor's hand. "Oh, how cold you are! Is it possible you
+are not warm yet? Indeed, you are not sufficiently clothed----"
+
+"My cloak is a little thin, but I cannot help that. Your Highness will
+readily understand that I am not able to buy a sealskin jacket."
+
+"You---- Anastasia, be kind enough to tell Justine to bring down my two
+winter cloaks."
+
+Anastasia obligingly brings the cloaks herself, and the Princess
+requests Fraeulein Fuhrwesen to try them on. Although the little pianist
+is shorter by almost a head and shoulders than the majestic Princess,
+and consequently the garments trail behind her like coronation-robes,
+the Oblonsky assures her that they fit her as though they had been made
+for her, and immediately bestows upon her one of the two, a magnificent
+wrap of dark-green velvet, trimmed with fur.
+
+The pianist kisses both hands of the donor, and kneels before her;
+the Princess says, laughing, "Don't be absurd, my dear. You see that
+giving--making others happy--is a passion with me. Stasy has one of my
+cloaks, you have another, I keep the simplest for myself. I have always
+lived for others only."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                       A CHANGE AT ERLACH COURT.
+
+
+"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark," Edgar von Rohritz
+says to himself, looking out of his window at Erlach Court upon the
+snow-covered garden below.
+
+Six days ago he arrived at the castle to spend Christmas, as had been
+agreed upon. The Christmas festivities are at an end. The children from
+the three villages upon whom Katrine had showered gifts have all, as
+well as Freddy, become accustomed to their new possessions, but the
+giant Christmas-tree, robbed, it is true, of its sugarplums, still
+stands with its candle-stumps and gilt ornaments in the corridor, and
+from the brown frames of the engravings in the dining-room a few
+evergreen boughs are still hanging, remnants of the Christmas
+decorations.
+
+Rohritz has enjoyed celebrating the lovely festival in the
+country,--everything was bright and gay; but there is a change of
+atmosphere at Erlach Court; the social charm for which it used to be
+renowned is lacking.
+
+Edgar's reception both by husband and by wife was most cordial: the
+captain is gay, talkative,--almost gayer and more talkative than in
+summer; but there is a cloud on Katrine's brow.
+
+Instead of the frank but thoroughly good-humoured tone in which she was
+wont to deride the captain's exaggerated outbreaks, she now passes them
+by in silence. She never quarrels with him, she is decidedly displeased
+with him, and--what surprises Rohritz more than all else--the captain
+seems to care very little for her displeasure.
+
+To-day Rohritz asked Katrine if it was quite decided that the captain
+was to leave the army and retire once for all to the country. Whereupon
+Katrine's fine eyes sparkle angrily, and with a slight quiver of her
+delicate nostril she replies, "So it seems. He will not listen to any
+suggestion of resuming the hard duties of the service, but has
+accustomed himself entirely to the lazy life of a landed proprietor."
+And when Rohritz remains silent, she exclaims, angrily, "I know what
+you are thinking: that I gave him no choice save to resign his career
+or his domestic life,--which is no choice at all with men of his stamp,
+whose love of domesticity is very pronounced, and who have no ambition!
+But when I acted so I thought he would lead a country life, without
+deteriorating; I thought he would occupy himself,--would devote his
+energies to politics, to Slavonic agricultural interests----"
+
+"Indeed?" Rohritz asks. "Did you really expect that of Les?"
+
+"Yes," Katrine exclaims, "I did expect that of Jack; and I had a right
+to expect it, for he lacks neither energy nor sense."
+
+"He was always considered one of the keenest and most gifted officers
+in the army," says Rohritz.
+
+"And with justice," Katrine confirms his words. "You have no idea of
+the energy with which he devoted himself to the service. Were you ever
+in Hungary?"
+
+"Yes, madame, I served as captain for two years in W----."
+
+"Then you are familiar with the fearful heat of the Hungarian summers.
+To order dinner and to sit upright at table exhausted my capacity;
+whilst he, although he rose at four that he might get through
+riding-school before the terrible heat of the day, scarcely ever lay
+down for half an hour. He continually had something to arrange, to
+decide, to command; he occupied himself with the individual concerns of
+every soldier in his squadron; he never took a moment's rest from
+morning until night; while now--now he does nothing, nothing but
+sleigh, mend a toy for the boy now and then, and read silly novels."
+
+Rohritz is spared the necessity of replying, for at this moment the
+quiet drawing-room where this conversation is going on is invaded by
+the sharp clear tinkle of large sleigh-bells. Katrine turns her head
+hastily and walks to the window.
+
+"So soon again!" she exclaims, as a fair, stout, pretty woman, wrapped
+in furs, allows herself, with much loud talking, to be helped out of
+the sleigh by the captain. Whilst Katrine, with a very gloomy face,
+takes her seat in an arm-chair to await the stranger's appearance,
+Rohritz withdraws, under the pretext of an obligation to answer
+immediately an important letter.
+
+But he writes no letter; he does not even sit down at his writing-desk,
+but stands at his window looking out at the snow. In town he had
+quite forgotten how pure and white snow originally is. He gazes
+at it as at some curiosity which he is beholding for the first time.
+On the rose-beds, the bushes, the old linden,--everywhere it lies
+thick,--thick!
+
+Here and there some branch thrusts forth a black point from the white
+covering, and the trunks of the trees are all divided in halves, a
+black half and a white one.
+
+He reflects upon the domestic drama about to be enacted close at hand.
+
+He is sorry for Katrine, although he lays at her door the blame for all
+the annoyances of which she has spoken to him, petty, provoking
+annoyances, which under certain circumstances may be the forerunners of
+actual misfortune.
+
+"One more who has thrust aside happiness," he murmurs, bitterly, adding
+on the instant, "If we could only recognize our happiness at the right
+time! If it could only say to us, 'Here I am, clasp me close!' But the
+truest, finest happiness is never self-asserting: it walks beside us
+mute and modest, warming and rejoicing our hearts, while we know not
+whence come the warmth and the delight."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+As the stout blonde whom Leskjewitsch helped out of the sleigh not only
+remains to lunch, but also takes afternoon tea and dinner at Erlach
+Court, Rohritz has abundant opportunity to observe her. That, like all
+sirens who disturb domestic serenity, she should be inferior in every
+respect to the wife whose peace of mind she threatens, was to have
+been expected; but that she should be so immeasurably inferior to
+Katrine,--for that Rohritz was not prepared.
+
+Anywhere else save in the country, and moreover in a world-forgotten
+corner of Ukrania, where the foxes bid one another good-night, and
+human beings are consequently easier to be induced than in civilized
+countries to bid one another good-day in spite of stupid social
+prejudices, any intercourse between this lady and the family at Erlach
+Court would have been impossible.
+
+The daughter of a lucifer-match manufacturer in P----, with a moderate
+degree of education and a strong passion for hunting, three years ago
+she had married the son of a riding-teacher, a certain Herr Ruprecht,
+who had been first a cavalry-officer, then a circus manager in America,
+and finally a newspaper-man in Vienna. After these various experiences
+with her promising husband, they had shortly before taken up their
+abode in a villa not far from Erlach Court, on the opposite bank of the
+Save. As the husband spent most of his time with a pretty actress, the
+young wife passed her days in dreary solitude. The country-people
+called her the grass-widow.
+
+"I need not assure you that I am not in the least jealous," Katrine
+remarks to Rohritz in the drawing-room, while the grass-widow with
+Freddy and the captain is playing billiards in the library, "but I
+frankly confess that I find the pleasure which Jack takes in the
+society of that common creature--that fat goose--incomprehensible. It
+irritates me. Moreover, she is ugly!"
+
+Rohritz receives this outburst of Katrine's precisely as he receives
+all her outbursts,--in thoughtful, courteous silence. Frau Ruprecht
+certainly is common and silly; ugly she is not. She has a dazzling
+complexion, a magnificent bust, and a regular profile, although with
+lips that are too thick, a double chin, and light eyelashes. She speaks
+in a common, Viennese dialect, has never read a sensible book in her
+life, uses perfumes in excess, and has no taste whatever in dress.
+
+But she drives like a Viennese hackman, she rides like a jockey, and
+her knowledge of sporting-matters would do honour to a professional
+trainer. She allows Leskjewitsch the utmost freedom of speech, and is
+ready to laugh at his worst jokes.
+
+She disgusts Edgar Rohritz quite as much as she disgusts Katrine;
+nevertheless he understands what there is about her to attract
+Leskjewitsch.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                            A PARIS LETTER.
+
+
+A few days after the appearance at Erlach Court of the grass-widow, the
+mail brings Rohritz a letter with the Paris post-mark. Edgar recognizes
+his sister-in-law's hand, opens it not without haste, and reads it not
+without interest. It runs thus:
+
+
+"_Eh bien_, my dear Edgar, _j'espere que vous serez content de moi_,"
+Therese always writes to her brother in a jargon of French, Italian,
+German, and English, which, out of regard for the pedantry of modern
+purists, we translate into as good English as we are able to command:
+"I hope you will be pleased with me. I frankly confess to you, what you
+probably guessed from my last postal card, that your request to me to
+try to brighten their life in Paris for two of your countrywomen did
+not afford me much pleasure. As a rule, compatriots so recommended are
+an unmitigated bore, from the pianists whose three hundred--no, that's
+too few--five hundred tickets we must dispose of, and who then, when
+you ask them to a soiree, are too grand to play the smallest mazourka
+of Chopin, to the Baronesses Wolnitzka, who request you to introduce
+them to Parisian society because they never have an opportunity to see
+any one at home. The pianists are bad enough, but the Wolnitzkas--oh!
+In one respect they are precisely alike: they are always offended. If
+you invite them _en famille_ they are offended because they suppose you
+are ashamed of them; if you invite them to a ball they are offended
+because you pay them no particular attention. The upshot is that you
+always have to refuse them something,--to lend a thousand francs to the
+genius when he already owes you five hundred,--to procure for the
+Wolnitzkas an invitation to some ball at the embassy; then ensues a
+quarrel, and they draw down the corners of their mouths and look the
+other way when they meet you in the street.
+
+"Only at the repeated request of your brother, who wherever anything
+Austrian is concerned is the personification of self-sacrificing
+devotion, did I make up my mind to call upon your acquaintance at the
+'Negroes.'
+
+"The hotel is--very plain, but I believe very respectable,--which is
+more than one has a right to expect of just such furnished lodgings in
+Paris. The staircase, a narrow crooked flight of steps with slippery
+sloping stairs, creaked beneath my feet; I was afraid it would break
+down as I mounted to the Meinecks' _appartement_. One final,
+depressing, menacing memory of the Wolnitzkas assailed me. Justin
+rings, the door opens, and all my prejudices vanish like snow before
+the sun. The daughter alone was at home. I fell in love with her on the
+instant,--so deeply in love that before I left I called her Stella and
+kissed her cheek. She is enchanting.
+
+"It is not only that she is exquisitely beautiful; she combines the
+most innocent simplicity with the greatest distinction, a combination
+never found except in Austrian women. You see I know how to value your
+countrywomen when they are really worth it.
+
+"Her face, her entire air, seemed created to banish all sadness from
+her presence; and yet there was a pathos in her look, in her smile,
+that went to my heart. But she must be happy. I mean to search for
+happiness for her; and I shall find it.
+
+"_Ce que femme le veut y Dieu le veut!_ When I do anything I do it
+thoroughly. What do you think? It took me three weeks to resolve to
+call upon the Meinecks. I invited them to dine without waiting for them
+to return my visit. You know my way. We passed a charming evening
+together, strictly informal, to become acquainted with one another. The
+mother was as little eccentric as is possible for a blue-stocking to
+be, and in the course of four hours had only two attacks of absence of
+mind, which does her honour. What a handsome face! Edmund, who is a
+connoisseur in such matters, maintains that she must have been more
+beautiful than her daughter,--high praise, since the daughter, by the
+way, pleases him as much as she does me. And then what wealth of
+learning behind that brow with its white hair! Wells of knowledge! a
+walking encyclopaedia!
+
+"Although the fashion of her gown was that of twenty years ago, she is
+still a thorough _grande dame_; and that is saying much in
+consideration of the evident dilapidation of their finances.
+
+"As a mother she may have her disagreeable side; she is too
+original,--too egotistic. She neglects her lovely daughter frightfully.
+All the time not absorbed by her literary labours she devotes to the
+study of Paris; and what mode of pursuing this study with the due
+amount of thoroughness do you suppose she has invented? She drives
+about for a certain number of hours daily on the tops of the various
+omnibuses.
+
+"Fancy!--on the top of an omnibus! A day or two ago, coming home from
+the Bon-Marche, as I was detained by a crowd of vehicles in the Rue du
+Bac I saw her comfortably installed upon the dizzy height of an
+omnibus-top. She wore a short black velvet cloak frayed at all the
+seams, the fur trimming eaten away by moths, pearl-gray gloves (her
+hands are ridiculously small), such as were worn twenty years ago upon
+state occasions, a black straw bonnet, and no muff. She sat between two
+vagabonds in white blouses, with whom she was talking earnestly, and
+looked like--well, like a queen dowager in disguise. As it was just
+beginning to rain, I sent my servant to beg her to alight, and took her
+home in my carriage.
+
+"A lady on the top of an omnibus! It is frightful; it is impossible.
+But still more impossible is a young girl who wishes to go upon the
+stage; and Stella wishes to go upon the stage.
+
+"Nevertheless my relations with the Meinecks grow daily more intimate.
+Heroic conduct on my part, is it not?
+
+"Poor little Stella! I feel an infinite pity for her. I have no faith
+in her career. Pshaw! Stella Meineck on the stage! 'Tis ridiculous! She
+does not know what she is talking about.
+
+"Meanwhile, I have impressed upon her that she is to tell no one of her
+artistic plans, which may come to naught. It might do her an injury.
+And I have a scheme! Ah, leave it to me. What I do I do well. Before
+the season is over Stella will be married. To establish a young girl
+with no money is difficult nowadays, particularly in Paris, where every
+man has a fixed price; but there are bargains to be had occasionally.
+
+"She is beautiful, she is lovely, and if the Meinecks do not date
+precisely from the Crusades the name sounds fine enough to impress some
+wealthy citizen who writes on his card the name of his estate in the
+country after his own, in hopes of thus manufacturing a title for
+himself.
+
+"I see you curl your haughty Austrian lip; you regard all these
+pseudo-aristocrats with sovereign contempt. You are wrong. Good
+heavens! why should not a man call himself after his castle if it has a
+prettier name than his own? Do we not find it more agreeable to present
+him to our acquaintances as Monsieur de Hauterive than as Monsieur
+Cabouat? Now 'tis out! There is a certain Monsieur Cabouat de Hauterive
+whom I have in my eye for Stella. He is very rich, has frequented
+the society of gentlemen from childhood, and has been received during
+the last few years by everybody; he loves music, has one of the
+finest private picture-galleries in Paris, and is in the prime of
+life,--barely forty-two,--quite young for a man: in short, he seems
+made for Stella. Last summer he laughingly challenged me to find a wife
+for him, expressly stating that he desired no dowry. At that time he
+was longing for repose and a home. I heard lately, however, that he had
+become entangled in a _liaison_ with S----, of the Opera-Bouffe. That
+would be frightful.
+
+"Moreover, I have two other men in view for Stella,--an Englishman,
+forty-five years old, rather shy in consequence of deafness, of very
+good family, an income of six thousand pounds sterling, and of good
+trustworthy character; and a Dutchman whose ears were cut off in
+Turkey, wherefore he is compelled to wear his hair after the fashion of
+the youthful Bonaparte; but these are trifles.
+
+"Poor melancholy little Stella will be glad to shelter her weary head
+beneath any respectable roof. The only thing that troubles me is that
+Zino knew her three years ago in Venice, and is perfectly bewitched by
+her. Can I prevent him from making love to her? It would be dreadful.
+Not that it would ever occur to him to be wanting in respect for her,
+but he might turn her head, and that would ruin all my plans. She
+might then conceive the idea of marrying only a man with whom she is in
+love,--perfect nonsense in her position: there is none such for her.
+Love is an article of supreme luxury in marriage, and exists for
+wealthy people and day-labourers only.
+
+"Yes, when I do anything I do it well! I do not write to you for two
+years, but then I give you twenty pages at once. Have you had the
+patience to read all this? If you have, let me entreat you to take to
+heart what follows.
+
+"Give us the pleasure of a visit from you. You do not know our new
+home, and I am burning with desire to show it to you. In the first
+story of our little house there is a room all ready for you, very
+comfortable, and, I give you my word, the chimney does not smoke. If
+you cannot be induced to come to us, let Edmund take rooms for you
+wherever you please. Only come! I shall else fancy that you have never
+forgiven me for once being bold enough to want to marry you off. Adieu!
+I promise you faithfully not to try to lasso you again. With kindest
+messages from us all,
+
+                       "Your affectionate sister,
+
+                                               "Therese."
+
+
+An extra slip of paper accompanied this succinct document. Its contents
+were as follows:
+
+
+                                            "Paris, 27th December.
+
+"How forgetful I am! The enclosed letter has been lying for a week in
+my portfolio. Although it is an old story now, I send it, because it
+will inform you of all that has been going on.
+
+"Two words more. Since I wrote it I have invited Stella and Hauterive
+to dinner once, and have had them another evening in our box at the
+opera. They both dislike Wagner: that is something. Moreover, he thinks
+her enchanting, and she does not think him very disagreeable,--which is
+about all that can be expected in a _mariage de conveyance_. Everything
+is working along smoothly; the betrothal is a mere question of time.
+What do you say now to my energy and capacity?"
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+He says nothing. He is very pale, and his hands tremble as he folds the
+letter and puts it away in his desk. A distressing, paralyzing
+sensation overpowers him. For a moment he sits motionless at his
+writing-table, his elbows resting upon it, his head in his hands.
+Suddenly he springs to his feet.
+
+"'Tis a crime! I must prevent it!" The next moment he slays his zeal
+with a smile. He prevent? And how? Shall he, like his namesake in the
+opera, rush in at the moment when the betrothal is going on and shout
+out his veto? And what is it to him if Stella chooses to lead a
+wealthy, brilliant existence beside an unloved husband? No one forces
+her to do so.
+
+Meanwhile, the door of his room opens, and with the familiarity of an
+old comrade the captain enters.
+
+"Will you not play a game of billiards with me, Edgar, before I drive
+out?" he asks.
+
+Rohritz declares himself ready for a game.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                     A STORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
+
+
+The billiard-table is in the library, a long, narrow room, with a vast
+deal of old-fashioned learning enclosed in tall, glazed bookcases. In a
+metal cage between the windows swings a gray parrot with a red head,
+screaming monotonously, "Rascal! rascal!" The afternoon sun gleams upon
+the glass of the bookcases; the whole room is filled with blue-gray
+smoke, and looks very comfortable. The gentlemen are both excellent
+billiard-players, only Edgar is a little out of practice. Leaning on
+his cue, he is just contemplating with admiration a bold stroke of his
+friend's, when Freddy, quite beside himself, rushes into the room and
+into his father's arms.
+
+"Why, what is it? what is the matter, old fellow?" the captain says,
+stroking his cheek kindly.
+
+"Os--ostler Frank----" Freddy begins, but without another word he
+bursts into a fresh howl.
+
+Startled by such sounds of woe from her son, Katrine hurries in, to
+find the captain seated in a huge leather arm-chair, the boy between
+his knees, vainly endeavouring to soothe him. Rohritz stands half
+smiling, half sympathetically, beside them, chalking his cue, while the
+parrot rattles at the bars of his cage and tries to out-shriek Freddy.
+
+"What has happened? Has he hurt himself? What is the matter?" Katrine
+asks, in great agitation.
+
+"N--n--no!" sobs Freddy, his fingers in his eyes, and the corners of
+his mouth terribly depressed; "but os--ostler Frank----"
+
+Ostler Frank is the second coachman and Freddy's personal friend.
+
+"Ostler Frank is an ass!" exclaims the captain, beginning to trace the
+connection of ideas in his son's mind; "an ass. You must not let him
+frighten you."
+
+"What did he tell you?" asks Katrine, standing beside her husband. "How
+did he frighten you? He has not dared to tell you a ghost-story? I
+expressly forbade it."
+
+"Oh, no, Katrine: 'tis all about some stupid nonsense, not worth
+speaking of," replies the captain,--"a mere nothing."
+
+"I should like to know what it is, however," Katrine says, growing more
+uneasy.
+
+"He--told--me--papa must fight a duel; and when--they--fight a
+duel--they are killed!" Freddy screams, in despair, nearly throttling
+his father in his affection and terror.
+
+"I should really be glad to have some intelligible explanation of the
+matter," Katrine says, with dignity.
+
+"Oh, it is the merest trifle," the captain rejoins, changing colour,
+and tugging at his moustache.
+
+"The affair is very simple, madame," Rohritz interposes. "Les felt it
+his duty, lately,--the day before yesterday, in fact,--to chastise an
+impertinent scoundrel in Hradnyk, and has conscientiously kept at home
+since, awaiting the fellow's challenge,--of course in vain. What he
+should have done would have been to emphasize in a note the box on the
+ear he administered."
+
+"Yes, that's true," says the captain: "it is a pity that it did not
+occur to me."
+
+Freddy has gradually subsided. As during his tearful misery he has done
+a great deal of rubbing at his eyes with inky fingers, his cheeks are
+now streaked with black, and he is sent off by his mother with a smile,
+in charge of a servant, to be washed.
+
+"Might I be informed," she asks, after the door has closed upon the
+child, and with a rather mistrustful glance at her husband, "what the
+individual at Hradnyk did to provoke the chastisement in question?"
+
+"'Tis not worth the telling, Katrine," stammers the captain. "Why
+should you care to know anything about it?"
+
+"You are very wrong, Les, to make any secret of it," Rohritz
+interposes. "The scoundrel undertook to use certain expressions which
+irritated Les, with regard to you, madame."
+
+"With regard to me?" Katrine exclaims, with a contemptuous curl of her
+lip. "What could any one say about me?"
+
+"What, indeed?" the captain repeats. "Well, I will tell you all about
+it some time when we are alone, if you insist upon it. It was a silly
+affair altogether, but I took the matter to heart."
+
+"You Hotspur!" Katrine laughs.
+
+Rohritz has just turned to slip out of the room and leave the pair to a
+reconciliatory _tete-a-tete_, when the door opens, and a servant
+announces that the sleigh is ready.
+
+"Where are you going?" Katrine asks, hastily, in an altered tone, as
+the servant withdraws.
+
+"I was going to Glockenstein, to take the 'Maitre de Forges' to the
+grass-widow; she asked me for it yesterday; but if you wish, Katrine, I
+will stay at home."
+
+"If I wish," Katrine coldly repeats. "Since when have I attempted to
+interfere in any way with your innocent amusements?"
+
+"I only thought----you have sometimes seemed to me a little jealous of
+the grass-widow."
+
+Rohritz could have boxed his friend's ears for his want of tact.
+Katrine's aristocratic features take on an indescribably haughty and
+contemptuous expression.
+
+"Jealous?--I?" she rejoins, with cutting severity, adding, with a
+shrug, "on the contrary, I am glad to have another woman relieve me of
+the trouble of entertaining you."
+
+Tame submission to such words from his wife, and before a witness, is
+not the part of a hot-blooded soldier like Jack Leskjewitsch.
+
+"Adieu, Rohritz!" he says, and, with a low bow to his wife, he leaves
+the room.
+
+For an instant Katrine seems about to run after him and bring him back.
+She takes one step towards the door, then pauses undecided. The sharp,
+shrill sound of sleigh-hells rises from without through the wintry
+silence: the sleigh has driven off. Katrine goes to the window to look
+after it. With lightning speed it glides along, the centre of a bluish,
+sparkling cloud of snow-particles whirled aloft by the trampling
+horses. It is out of sight almost immediately.
+
+Her head bent, Katrine turns from the window, and leaves the room with
+lagging steps.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+The _menu_ for dinner comprises the captain's favourite dish of roast
+pheasants, but six o'clock strikes and the master of the house has not
+yet arrived at home.
+
+"Would it not be better to postpone the dinner a little for to-day?"
+Katrine asks Rohritz, for form's sake. They wait one hour,--two hours:
+the captain does not appear. At last Katrine orders dinner to be
+served. Unable to eat a morsel, she sits with an empty plate before
+her, hardly speaking a word.
+
+The meal is over, coffee has been served, Freddy has played three games
+of cards with his tutor and then disappeared with a very sleepy face.
+
+Katrine and Rohritz sit opposite each other, each taking great pains to
+appear unconcerned. One quarter of an hour after another passes without
+a word exchanged between them. Suddenly Katrine rises, goes to the
+window, opens first the inner shutter and then the peep-hole in the
+other.
+
+"Listen how the wind roars!" she says, in a hoarse, subdued voice, to
+Rohritz. "And the snow is falling as if a feather bed had been cut in
+two."
+
+Rohritz is really unable to smile, as he would have been tempted to do
+at any other time, at the contrast between Katrine's deeply tragic air
+and her very commonplace comparison: he is rather anxious himself.
+
+"Hark! just hark how the wind whistles! I hope Jack has not got wedged
+in a snow-drift."
+
+Rohritz makes some reply which Katrine does not heed. In increasing
+agitation she paces the room to and fro.
+
+"The worst place is the bit of road near the quarry," she murmurs to
+herself. "If he goes a hand's-breadth too far on one side, then----"
+
+"Les has a remarkable sense of locality, and is the best whip I know,"
+Rohritz remarks, soothingly.
+
+She is silent, compresses her lips, listens at the window, hearkens to
+the raging wind, which drives the snow-flakes against the shutters and
+tears and rattles at the boughs of the giant linden until they shriek
+from out their long winter sleep.
+
+How much we are able to forgive a man when we are anxious about him!
+
+"I would rather send some one to meet him," she stammers. "I am
+exceedingly anxious."
+
+She reaches out her hand for the bell-rope, when suddenly from the
+far distance, like mocking, elfin laughter, comes the tinkle of
+sleigh-bells. Katrine holds her breath, listens. The sleigh approaches,
+draws up before the door. Rohritz goes out into the hall. Katrine hears
+a man stamping the snow from his boots, hears the captain's fresh,
+cheery voice as he answers his friend's questions. Her anxiety is
+converted into a sensation of great bitterness. She cannot rally
+herself too much for her childish anxiety, cannot forgive herself for
+behaving so ridiculously before Rohritz. Whilst she has been fancying
+her husband lost in a snow-drift, he beyond all doubt has been
+admirably entertained with the grass-widow.
+
+The door opens; the captain appears alone, without his comrade.
+
+"Still up, Katrine?" he asks, in a gentle undertone, approaching his
+wife, and with an uncertain, half-embarrassed smile he adds, "Rohritz
+told me you were anxious about--about me." As he speaks he tries to
+take his wife's hand to draw her towards him; but Katrine avoids him.
+
+"Rohritz was mistaken," she rejoins, very dryly. "For a moment I
+thought you might have fallen into the quarry, because I could not see
+any apparent reason for your late return. But as for anxiety----"
+Without finishing the sentence, she shrugs her shoulders.
+
+The captain smiles bitterly, and passes his hand across his forehead.
+
+"Yes, he was evidently mistaken; it was an attempt to bring us
+together," he murmurs; "his sentimental representation did at first
+seem rather incredible to me. But what one wishes to believe one does
+believe so easily! I was foolish enough to delight in the hope of a
+kindly welcome from you; but, in fact, in comparison with the reception
+you have vouchsafed me the weather outside is genial."
+
+He seats himself astride of a low chair, and begins to drum impatiently
+upon the back of it.
+
+"It seems to me quite late enough to go to bed," says Katrine, taking a
+silver candlestick from the mantel-piece. "It is a quarter-past ten."
+
+Suddenly the captain grasps her by the wrist. "Stay!" he says, sternly.
+
+"You have come back in a very bad humour," Katrine remarks, with a
+contemptuous smile. "The grass-widow must have proved unkind. Your
+delay in returning led me to suppose the contrary."
+
+The captain looks at his wife with an odd expression. Was it possible
+she could take sufficient interest in him to be jealous?
+
+"I have not seen the grass-widow," he rejoins, after a short pause.
+
+"That is, you did not find her at home? How very sad!"
+
+"I did not go to Glockenstein."
+
+"Ah, indeed! I thought----"
+
+"You are quite right," he said, with an air of bravado. "After the very
+kind and choice words with which in the presence of an auditor you
+dismissed me, I certainly whipped up the horses in order to reach
+Glockenstein with all speed. When angels will have nothing to do with
+us, we are fain to go for consolation to the devil: he is sure to be at
+hand. Frau Ruprecht would have received me with open arms; I am by no
+means"--with a forced laugh--"so insignificant in her eyes; for her I
+am quite a hero, and what would you have? she is stupid, but she is
+pretty and young, and an amount of consideration from any woman
+flatters a poor fellow who is never without the consciousness of his
+inferiority in the eyes of his clever wife at home."
+
+"Ah! really?" Katrine sneers. "May I beg you to make a little haste
+with your explanations?--the lamp is beginning to burn dimly."
+
+"It burns quite well enough for what I have to say," replies the
+captain. "I whipped up my horses, as I said,--I was positively in a
+hurry to fall at the Ruprecht's feet; but, just at the last moment, so
+many different things occurred to me! Glockenstein was in sight, but I
+turned aside, and then drove over to Reitzenberg's to settle with him
+about the wood."
+
+"Ah! It seems to have been a very protracted business discussion."
+
+"I took supper with Reitzenberg, and played a game of cards
+afterwards."
+
+"Hm! Since, then, you have perhaps sufficiently explained the reason of
+your delay, will you permit me to withdraw?" Katrine asks.
+
+"Apparently you do not believe me. And yet you ought to know that
+falsehood is not to be reckoned among my bad qualities."
+
+"True; but"--Katrine shrugs her shoulders--"no man hesitates to
+improvise a little when there's a lady in the case. I should like to
+know, however, why you take so much trouble in the present instance for
+me, who have so little interest in such things." And, taking the
+candlestick once more from the chimney-piece, she asks, "Can I go now?
+Have you finished?"
+
+"No," he exclaims, angrily, "I have not finished, and you will hearken
+to me. Matters are come to a worse pass than you fancy; our whole
+existence is at stake. You know how my sister Lina's marriage turned
+out, and you are in a fair way to plunge me into the same misery into
+which Franz Meineck was thrust by his wife."
+
+"Your comparison of me to your sister seems to me rather forced,"
+Katrine replies. "I know it is not pleasant to hear one's relatives
+criticised by another, however we may disapprove of them ourselves, but
+I must defend myself. Your sister neglected her household and her
+children, giving herself over to a ridiculous ambition; whilst I----"
+She hesitates, deterred from proceeding by something in the captain's
+look:
+
+"Whilst you----" he begins. "I know perfectly well what you would say.
+Your household is perfectly attended to, you are an ideal mother, and
+daintily neat. In a word, you would have been for me the ideal wife if
+you had ever shown me a particle of affection."
+
+"I have always done my duty by you."
+
+"Your hard, prescribed, bounden duty."
+
+"You could not expect anything more of me. When we married it was
+agreed between us that each should be satisfied with a sensible amount
+of friendship."
+
+He has risen, and is gazing at her keenly, searchingly.
+
+"That is true; you are right," he says, bitterly. "The sad thing about
+it is that I had forgotten it!"
+
+"I cannot understand how you--I must say I never have observed--that
+you----"
+
+"Indeed? You never have observed that I have long ceased to keep my
+part of our compact!" the captain exclaims. "Really? Women are
+fabulously blind when they do not choose to see. Do you suppose I
+should have allowed the reins to be taken from my hands, do you suppose
+I should have resigned my authority over you, have lost the right of
+disposing of my own child, and have abandoned my profession, if--if I
+had not fallen in love with you like a very school-boy! There! now
+despise me doubly for my confession, and until you see me stifling in
+the mire, like poor Franz Meineck, console yourself with the conviction
+that you have done your duty by me."
+
+He makes her a profound bow, then turns and leaves the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                           A SLEEPLESS NIGHT.
+
+
+"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck,
+console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by
+me."
+
+Strange how deeply these words are impressed upon Katrine's soul! She
+does not sleep during the night following upon the captain's
+explanation, no, not for a quarter of an hour.
+
+She tosses about restlessly in bed; a moonbeam which has contrived to
+slip through a crack in her shutters points at her with uncanny
+persistency, like an accusing ghostly finger. The little clock on her
+writing-table strikes twelve; the sixth of January is past, the seventh
+of January has begun. The seventh of January! It was her wedding-day.
+On the seventh of January nine years before, without a spark of love
+for Jack Leskjewitsch, but with the angry memory of humiliation
+suffered at another's hands, she had donned her gown of bridal white
+and her bridal wreath had been placed upon her head. In her inmost soul
+she had compared her bridal robes to a shroud, and so cold, so white,
+so stern, had she looked on that day that those who helped to dress her
+for the sacred ceremony had often said later that they had seemed to
+themselves to be preparing a corpse for burial, while all who witnessed
+the marriage declared that no funeral could have been sadder.
+
+She had first known Jack on her father's, the Freiherr von Rinsky's,
+estate in M----. Quartered at the castle, Jack had soon ingratiated
+himself with its gouty old master. Katrine did not dislike him,--nay,
+she rather liked him. Her pride, which had been suffering from the
+destruction of her illusions ever since the winter she had spent with
+her aunt in Pesth three years before, turned with a bitterness that
+bordered on disgust from all the homage paid her by men. Jack
+Leskjewitsch had always been attentive to her without ever making love
+to her,--which attracted her. When he asked her to marry him he did it
+in so dry, odd a way that from sheer surprise she did not at once say
+no.
+
+She replied that she would take his offer into consideration. Living
+beneath the same roof with a young stepmother whom she did not like,
+and who ruled her father, the suit of a wealthy, thoroughly honourable
+man was not to be lightly rejected. Yet if he had wooed her
+passionately and tenderly she would surely have refused to listen to
+him. This, however, he did not do.
+
+When she confessed to him that a bitter disappointment had paralyzed
+all the sentiment she had ever possessed, that he was not to expect any
+love from her, he received the confession with the utmost calmness, and
+replied that he too had nothing to offer her save cordial friendship.
+
+"Those of my friends who married for love are one and all wretched now.
+Let us try it after another fashion," he had said to her. And thus,
+almost with a laugh, without the slightest emotion, they had been
+betrothed on a gray, rainy November day, when the winds were raging as
+if they had sworn to blow out the sun's light in the skies, while
+the last field-daisies were hanging their heads among the faded
+meadow-grass as if tired of life.
+
+Six weeks afterwards they were married, and took the usual trip to Rome
+and from one hotel to another.
+
+The pale moonbeam still pointed at her like an accusing finger; its
+silver light fell upon her past and revealed many things which she had
+heedlessly forgotten during the nine years which now lay behind her.
+
+She had married poor, very poor, had brought her husband nothing save
+her trousseau.
+
+All the material comfort of her existence came from him. To show him
+any special gratitude for that would indeed have been petty; but,
+putting it aside, with how much consideration he had always treated
+her! how carefully he had removed from her path all need for trouble
+and exertion, with the tenderness which rude soldiers alone know how to
+lavish upon their wives. She had complained of the inconveniences of
+the nomadic life of the army; but who had drained all those
+inconveniences to the dregs? He! He had taken all trouble upon himself.
+In their wanderings she and the child had been cared for like the most
+frail and precious treasures, upon the transportation of which it was
+impossible to bestow too much thought. It had always been, "Spare
+yourself, and look out for the boy!" and either "It is too hot," or "It
+is too cold: you might be ill, or you might take cold; but do not stir.
+I will see to it; rely upon me!"
+
+Yes, she had indeed relied upon him; he looked after everything,
+without any words, without annoying her with restlessness, quietly,
+simply, and as if it could not have been otherwise.
+
+And what had she done for him in return for all his care and
+consideration? She had kept his home in order, had treated him with
+more or less friendliness, had never flirted in the least with any
+other man, and had presented him with a charming child.
+
+But no; she had not even presented him with it: she had jealously kept
+it for herself, had grudged him every caress which the boy bestowed
+upon his father; she had spoiled the child in order that she might hold
+the first place in his heart. Yet, oddly enough, in spite of all her
+indulgence the boy was fonder of his fiery, irritable, good-humoured,
+but strict papa whose nod he obeyed, than of herself, whom the young
+gentleman could wind around his finger. She confessed this to herself,
+not without bitterness.
+
+When, the previous autumn, Erlach Court had come to her by inheritance
+from a grand-uncle, she was filled with a desire to break off all
+connection with an army life. Without the slightest consideration for
+her husband, she had left him and forced him for her sake to adopt an
+existence that was contrary to all his habits and tastes. The moonbeam
+still penetrated into her room: it grew brighter and brighter, and at
+last lit up the most secluded corner of her heart.
+
+"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck,
+console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by
+me."
+
+Again and again the words echoed through her soul.
+
+"I have done my duty by him," she repeated to herself, with the
+obstinacy with which we are wont to clutch a self-illusion that
+threatens to vanish. "I have done my duty."
+
+Suddenly she trembles from head to foot, and, hiding her face in the
+pillow, she bursts into tears.
+
+The boundless egotism, in all its petty childishness, which has
+informed her intercourse with her husband flashes upon her conscience.
+
+How is it that she has never perceived that he has long since ceased to
+perform his part of their agreement? Little tokens of affection full of
+a timid poetry hitherto heedlessly overlooked now occur to her. Why had
+she not understood them? Why had she never felt a spark of love for
+him? Her cheeks burn. She had continually reproached her husband with
+never being done with his illusions, and she---- In a secret drawer of
+her writing-table there is at this very moment, shrivelled and faded, a
+gardenia which she has never been able to bring herself to destroy. She
+springs up, lights a candle, hastens to her writing-table, finds the
+ugly brown relic,--and burns it. When she lies down in bed again the
+admonitory moonbeam has vanished, but through the cold black of the
+winter night filters the first weak shimmer of the dawn. The dreamy
+ding-dong of a church bell among the mountains ringing for early mass
+has the peaceful sound of a sacred morning serenade as it floats into
+her room.
+
+It is barely six o'clock. She folds her hands, a fervent prayer rises
+to her lips, and, with a still more fervent, unspoken prayer in her
+heart, her brown head sinks back upon the cool white pillow, and she
+falls asleep.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                            GLOWING EMBERS.
+
+
+"Papa is lazy to-day," Freddy remarks the next morning, breaking the
+silence that reigns at the breakfast-table and looking pensively at his
+father's empty chair. It is late, Freddy has drunk his milk, and
+Rohritz and the tutor are engaged with their second cup of tea. The
+host, usually so early, has not yet made his appearance.
+
+"You ought not to make such remarks about papa," Katrine corrects her
+son on this occasion, although she is usually very indulgent to
+Freddy's impertinence. "Run up to his room and tell him I sent you to
+ask whether he took cold last evening, and if he would not like a cup
+of tea sent to him." In two minutes the boy returns, shouting gaily,
+"Papa sends you word that he does not want anything; he has nothing but
+a bad cold in his head, and he is coming presently."
+
+In fact, the captain follows close upon the heels of his pretty little
+messenger.
+
+"I was troubled about you," Katrine says, receiving him with a sort of
+timid kindness which seems painfully forced.
+
+"Indeed? Very kind of you," he makes reply, in a very hoarse voice,
+"but quite unnecessary."
+
+"You seem, however, to have taken cold," Rohritz interposes.
+
+"Pshaw! 'tis nothing. I lost my way in the dark last night, and got
+into a drift this side of K----: that's all.--Well, Katrine, am I to
+have my tea?"
+
+"I have just made you some fresh; the first was beginning to be
+bitter," she makes excuse. "Wait a moment."
+
+The captain is about to reply, but a fit of coughing interrupts him.
+
+"Papa barks as Hector does at the full moon," Freddy remarks, merrily.
+
+Katrine frowns. Why does Freddy seem so thoroughly spoiled to-day?
+
+"I told you just now that it is very wrong in you to speak in that way
+of your father."
+
+"Let him do it; papa knows what he means," the captain replies, turning
+to his little son sitting beside him rather than to his wife. "You're
+fond enough of papa,--love him pretty well,--eh, my boy?"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" says Freddy, nestling close to his father; "don't I?"
+That any one could doubt this fact evidently amazes him. The captain
+talks and plays merrily with the boy, never addressing a single word to
+Katrine.
+
+Breakfast is over. For an hour Katrine has been sitting in her room,
+some sewing which has dropped from her hands lying in her lap,
+listening and waiting for his step,--in vain. Another quarter of an
+hour glides by: her heart throbs louder and louder, and tears fill her
+eyes. Suddenly she tosses her work aside, rises, and with head erect,
+looking neither to the right nor to the left, walks with firm, rapid
+steps along the corridor to the captain's room. At the door she
+pauses,--pauses for one short moment,--then boldly turns the latch and
+enters. Is he there? Yes, he is standing at the window, looking out
+upon the quiet, white landscape. Rather surprised, he looks back over
+his shoulder at his wife, for he knows it is she: he could recognize
+her step among a thousand.
+
+"Do you want anything?" he asks, dryly.
+
+"N--no."
+
+The captain turns again to the snowy landscape.
+
+"What are you gazing at so steadily?" Katrine asks him. "Is there
+anything particularly interesting to be seen out there?"
+
+"No," he replies; "but when the room is cheerless, one looks out of the
+window for diversion."
+
+A pause ensues.
+
+"What shall I say to him? what can I say to him?" she asks herself,
+uneasily. The blood mounts to her cheeks; she stands rooted to the
+spot, not venturing to approach him. At last, she begins with all the
+indifference at her command, "You have forgotten our wedding-day today,
+for the first time. Strange!"
+
+"Very," the captain rejoins, with bitter irony.
+
+Another pause ensues. Katrine is just about to withdraw, mortified,
+when the captain again turns to her.
+
+"I did not forget. No, I do not forget such things; and, if you care to
+know, I had provided the yearly, touching surprise in celebration of
+the anniversary; but I suppressed it at the very last moment."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Why? A woman of your superior sense should be able to answer that
+question herself. After having been laughed at eight times for my
+well-meant attentions, I said to myself finally that it was useless to
+serve for the ninth time as a target for your sarcasm."
+
+She comes a step nearer to him.
+
+"I had no desire to laugh to-day."
+
+"Indeed! Hm! then you can open the packet on my writing-table. I had
+the boy photographed for you, and the picture turned out very well."
+
+She opens the packet. 'Tis a perfect picture,--Freddy himself, bright,
+wayward, charming, one hand upon his hip, his fur cap on his head.
+
+"He is a beauty, our boy!" she exclaims, smiling down upon the picture
+in its simple frame.
+
+"Our boy!" the captain murmurs. "You are immensely gracious to-day; you
+usually speak of him as if he belonged to you only."
+
+Katrine blushes a little, but, without apparently noticing this last
+remark, says, "He begins to look like you, the dear little fellow!"
+
+"Indeed? Tis a pity----"
+
+"You really would do better to sit by the fire and warm yourself than
+to stand shivering at that cold window."
+
+"The fire has gone out, and there is small comfort in sitting by the
+ashes."
+
+"You ought to have made the fire burn afresh."
+
+"I tried to," he replied, with significant emphasis, "but I failed."
+
+"Really!" she says, laughing archly in the midst of her vexation; "you
+must have tried very awkwardly. If I am not mistaken, there are embers
+enough under the ashes to set Rome on fire. I should like to see."
+
+She kneels upon the hearth, scrapes together the embers, and with great
+skill and precision piles three logs of wood on top of them. One minute
+later the wood is burning with a clear flame.
+
+"Jack!" she calls, very gently.
+
+He starts, and looks round.
+
+"Jack, is the fire burning brightly enough for you now?" she asks.
+
+As in a dream he approaches her.
+
+"Now sit down," she says, in a tone of gay command, pulling forward a
+large, comfortable arm-chair, "and warm yourself."
+
+He obeys, looking down at her half in surprise, half in tenderness, as
+she kneels beside him, slender, graceful, wonderfully fair to see, with
+the reflection from the fire crimsoning her cheeks and lending a golden
+lustre to her light-brown hair.
+
+Her breath comes quick, as it does when there is something in the
+heart, longing for utterance, which will not rise to the lips. She had
+thought out so many fine phrases early this morning in which to clothe
+her repentance, but they all stick fast in her throat.
+
+The bell rings for lunch. Good heavens! is this moment to pass without
+sealing their reconciliation?
+
+He sits mute. The wood in the chimney crackles loudly, sometimes with a
+noise almost like a pistol-shot.
+
+Katrine still kneels before the fire, growing more and more restless.
+On a sudden she throws back her head, and, casting off the unnatural
+degree of feminine gentleness which has characterized her all the
+morning, she exclaims angrily, her eyes flashing through burning tears,
+"What would you have, Jack? How far must I go before you come to meet
+me?"
+
+"Oh, Katrine, my darling, wayward Katrine!" the captain almost shouts,
+clasping her in his arms. "At last I know that 'tis no deceitful dream
+mocking me!"
+
+A light tripping step is heard in the corridor. Both spring up as
+Freddy's merry little face appears at the door:
+
+"Lunch is growing cold."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+In the evening, as the couple are sitting in the drawing-room in the
+twilight, Katrine says,--
+
+"If only there were no such thing as war!"
+
+"What makes you think of that?" asks the captain.
+
+"Why, because I should beg you to go back to the service, if I were not
+so mortally afraid of a campaign."
+
+"No need to take that into consideration," the captain rejoins, "for in
+case of war I should go back immediately: not even you could prevent
+me, Kitty. But tell me, could you really summon up courage enough?"
+
+"Could I not? It will be very hard eventually to part from the boy, but
+sooner or later we must send him to the Theresianeum, and--to speak
+frankly--even a separation from Freddy would not distress me so much as
+to see you degenerate in an inactive life."
+
+"You really would, then, Kitty?--would voluntarily subject yourself
+again to all the inconveniences and petty miseries of the soldier's
+nomadic life?"
+
+"Try me," and her large eyes are very serious and determined as they
+look into his own, "try me, and you shall see what a comfortable home I
+will make for you in the forlornest Hungarian village."
+
+"Ah, you angel!" her husband exclaims, taking her soft little hand in
+his and pressing it against his cheek. "What a pity it is that we have
+lost so much time in all these nine years!"
+
+"A pity indeed," she admits, "but 'tis never too late to mend,--eh?"
+
+At this moment Rohritz enters the room, as is usual at this hour every
+afternoon, to get a cup of tea. He observes, first, that the pair have
+forgotten to ring for the lamp, and, secondly, that they stop talking
+upon his entrance; in short, that, for the first time, he has intruded.
+
+"You have come for your tea," says Katrine. "I had positively forgotten
+that there was such a thing. Ring the bell, Jack."
+
+Before the evening is over Edgar has made a very important
+discovery,--to wit, that however cordially one may rejoice when two
+human souls after long and aimless wanderings come together and are
+united, any prolonged association with a couple so reconciled is
+considerably more tedious than with an unreconciled pair; wherefore he
+leaves Erlach Court on the following day.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                           THERESE, THE WISE.
+
+
+In Therese's boudoir are assembled four people, Therese, her husband,
+her brother Zino, and Edgar,--Edgar, who on the previous day, to the
+great surprise of his relatives in Paris, was persuaded to transfer
+himself from the Hotel Bouillemont, whither he had gone upon his
+arrival, to the Avenue Villiers and the shelter of his brother's
+hospitable roof.
+
+Therese, exhausted, more breathless than usual, is lying on a lounge,
+wrapped in a thick white coverlet, shivering, coughing, feverish, with
+every symptom of a violent cold, and disputing vehemently with her
+husband as to whether, as he maintains, she caught the said cold on
+Monday at the Bon-Marche, or, as she maintains, on Tuesday in his
+smoking-room.
+
+"No one could take cold in my smoking-room; it is the only room in the
+house where the temperature is a healthy one," Edmund declares. "Judge
+for yourself, Edgar; there's no getting a sensible word out of Zino.
+How could any one catch cold in my smoking-room? I know perfectly well
+how she caught it. Day before yesterday--Monday--there were bargains in
+Oriental rugs advertised at the Bon-Marche. My wife rushes there in
+such a storm----"
+
+"That means, I drove there in an hermetically-closed coupe," Therese
+defends herself.
+
+"Pshaw! the damp air always penetrates into every carriage," her
+husband cuts her words short. "The fact is, she rushed to the Rue du
+Bac, where she did not buy a single rug, but instead a dozen umbrellas,
+and then came home in a state of exhaustion,--such exhaustion that I
+had positively to carry her up-stairs, because she was unable to stir;
+and now she blames my smoking-room for her cold! It is absurd!" And, by
+way of further expression of his anger, for which words do not suffice,
+Edmund rattles the tongs about among the embers on the hearth.
+
+"Have some regard for my nerves, Edmund," Therese entreats, stopping
+her ears with her fingers. "You make more noise than one of Wagner's
+operas. Twelve umbrellas!" Then turning to Edgar, "To place the
+slightest dependence upon what my husband says----"
+
+But before she can finish her sentence Edmund breaks in again:
+
+"It makes no difference; it might have been three umbrellas and six
+straw bonnets: it is all the same. Every Parisian woman suffers from
+the bargain-mania, but I have never seen the disease developed to such
+a degree as in my wife. She buys everything she comes across, if it is
+only a bargain,--old iron rubbish, new plans of Paris, embroideries,
+antique clocks, and bottles of rock-crystal as----christening-presents
+for children who are not yet born!"
+
+"_A propos_ of presents," Therese observes, reflectively, "do you not
+think, Zino, that the chandelier of Venetian glass I bought last year
+would be a good wedding-present for Stella Meineck?"
+
+"Is she betrothed, then?" Zino inquires, naturally.
+
+"As good as," Therese assents.
+
+"To whom?" Capito asks, sitting down, both hands in his
+trousers-pockets, and crossing his legs.
+
+"To Arthur de Hauterive,--a brilliant match," says Therese.
+
+"Cabouat de Hauterive," murmurs Zino, ironically stroking his
+moustache, and stretching his legs out a little farther. "A brilliant
+match if you choose, but rather a scaly fellow,--eh?"
+
+"I should like to know what objection you can make to him," Therese
+asks, crossly.
+
+Zino shrugs his shoulders up to his ears, and then straightens them
+again, without taking any further pains to clothe in words his opinion
+of Monsieur Cabouat.
+
+"He is not a thorough gentleman," says the elder Rohritz.
+
+"He is a thorough snob," says Zino.
+
+"One question, if you please." Edgar suddenly and unexpectedly takes
+part in the conversation: he has hitherto seemed quite absorbed in
+contemplation of a photograph on the mantel-piece of his little niece.
+"Has Fraeulein Meineck agreed to the match?"
+
+"Yes, to my great surprise," his brother replies. "I did not expect it
+of her."
+
+"It was no easy task to bring her round," Therese declares; "but I went
+to work in the most sensible manner. 'Have you any other preference?' I
+asked Stella yesterday, after telling her that Monsieur de Hauterive
+was ready to lay his person and his millions at her feet and had begged
+me to ascertain for him beforehand that his suit would not be
+rejected."
+
+"And what was Stella's reply?" Edmund asks.
+
+"She started and changed colour. 'Dear child,' I said, 'it is perfectly
+natural that you should have some little fancy: we have all had our
+enthusiasms for the man in the moon; _cela va sans dire_; such trifles
+never count. The question is, Have you a passion for some one who
+returns it and who you have reason to hope will marry you?'
+
+"'No!' she answered, very decidedly.
+
+"'Then do not hesitate an instant, dear child,' I exclaimed; and when
+she did not reply I laid the case before her, making clear to her how
+unjustifiable her refusal of this offer would be. 'You have no money!'
+I exclaimed. 'You propose to go upon the stage. That is simply
+nonsense; for, setting aside the fact that you have scarcely voice
+enough to succeed, a theatrical career for a girl with your principles
+and prejudices is impossible. Look your future in the face, dear heart.
+Your little property must soon, as you cannot but admit, be consumed;
+that meanwhile the fairy prince of your girlish dreams should appear as
+your suitor is not within the bounds of probability. You must choose
+between two courses, either to earn your living as a governess or to
+give lessons; since you do not wish to leave your mother, you must
+adopt the latter. Fancy it!--running about in galoshes and a
+water-proof in all kinds of weathers, looked at askance by servants in
+the halls, tormented by your clients and pupils, no gleam of light
+anywhere, except in an occasional ticket for the theatre, either given
+to you or purchased out of your small savings, and finally in your old
+age a miserable invalid existence supported chiefly by the alms of a
+few charitable pupils. This is the future that awaits you if you refuse
+Monsieur de Hauterive. On the other hand, if you accept him, how
+delightful a life you will lead! You can assist your mother and sister
+largely, and will have nothing to do except to treat with a reasonable
+degree of consideration a good husband who exacts no passionate
+devotion from you, and to be the mistress, with all the grace and charm
+natural to you, of one of the finest houses in Paris. Why, you cannot
+possibly hesitate, my darling.'"
+
+All three gentlemen have listened with exemplary patience to this
+lengthy exordium,--Edmund with a gloomy frown, and Zino with the
+half-contemptuous smile which he has taught himself to bestow upon the
+most tragic occurrences, while Edgar's face tells no tale, as during
+his sister-in-law's long speech it has been steadily turned away,
+gazing into the fire.
+
+"And what did the little Baroness have to say to your brilliant
+argument in favour of a sensible marriage?" Zino asks, after a short
+pause.
+
+"For a moment she sat perfectly quiet: she had grown very pale, and her
+breath came quick. Then she looked up at me out of those large, dark
+eyes of hers, which you all know, and said,--
+
+"'Yes, you are right. I will be sensible.'
+
+"I took her in my arms, and exulted in my victory. I confess I had a
+hard battle; but you must all admit that I was right."
+
+"I admit that you went resolutely to work," says her husband, gloomily.
+
+"What do you think, Edgar?"
+
+"Since I have no personal knowledge of Monsieur Cabouat de Hauterive,
+my opinion is of no value," Edgar replies, dryly.
+
+"Well, you at least think I was right, Zino?" Therese exclaims, rather
+piqued.
+
+"Certainly," he replies, "since I have lately become quite too poor to
+indulge in expensive pleasures, and consequently cannot marry for love.
+I shall be glad at least to know Stella well taken care of."
+
+"_Mauvais sujet!_" Therese laughs. "I see it is high time to marry you
+off, or you'll be committing some stupidity. I must marry you all
+off,--you too, Edgar--ah, _pardon_, I believe I did promise to leave
+you unmolested; but I have such a superb match for you."
+
+"Who is it?" asks Zino. "I am really curious."
+
+"Natalie Lipinski."
+
+"_Pardon_, there you are reckoning without your host," the Prince says,
+almost crossly. "Natalie does not wish to marry."
+
+"So say all girls, before the right man appears."
+
+"You're wrong," Zino interposes. "I know of three people--hm! people of
+some importance--to whom Natalie has given the mitten. Two of them I
+cannot name: the third well, I myself am the third. She refused me
+point-blank."
+
+"_Tiens!_ now I guess the reason of your lasting friendship for
+Natalie: you are ever grateful to her for that refusal!" Therese
+laughs. "You and Natalie!--it is inconceivable."
+
+"She pleased me," the Prince confesses. "'Tis strange: you're sure to
+over-eat yourself on delicacies; you never do on good strong bouillon.
+Natalie always reminds me of bouillon. She is the only girl for whom
+ever since I first knew her--that is, ever since I was a boy--I have
+felt the same degree of friendship. _Ca!_" he takes his watch out of
+his pocket; "she begged me not to fail to come to the Rue de la Bruyere
+to-day. Will not you come too, Edgar? She would be delighted to see
+you."
+
+Edgar lifts his brows with a bored expression. Before he finds time in
+his slow way to answer, Therese interposes:
+
+"Do go, Edgar, please! You must know that Monsieur de Hauterive is to
+make his declaration to Stella to-day. I advised him to speak to her
+before he preferred his suit to her mother: it is the fashion in
+Austria. Stella would be sure to value such a concession to Austrian
+custom. Yes, Edgar, go to the Lipinskis' and watch little Stella and
+her adorer. If I were not so utterly done up I would go too, I am so
+very curious."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                           STELLA'S FAILURE.
+
+
+Like most of the salons of foreigners in Paris, even of the most
+distinguished, that of the Lipinskis produces the impression of a
+social menagerie. Artists, Americans, diplomatists, stand out in strong
+relief against a background of old Russian acquaintances. French people
+are seldom met with there. Scarcely three months have passed since the
+Lipinskis took up their abode in Paris, and they have not yet had time
+to organize their circle. The agreeable atmosphere of every-day
+intimacy which constitutes the chief charm of every select circle is
+lacking. The Russians and the elderly diplomatists gather for the most
+part about the fireplace, where Madame Lipinski holds her little court.
+
+She is an uncommonly distinguished, graceful old lady, who had been a
+celebrated beauty in the best days of the Emperor Nicholas's reign, and
+had played her part at court. One of the Empress's maids of honour, she
+had preserved in her heart an undying, unchanging love for the
+chivalric, maligned Emperor, so sadly tried towards the end of his
+life. She wears her thick white hair stroked back from her temples and
+adorned by a rather fantastic cap of black lace; her tiny ears,
+undecorated by ear-rings, are exposed,--which looks rather odd in a
+woman of her age. As soon as she becomes at her ease with a new
+acquaintance she tells him of the annoyance which these same tiny ears
+occasioned her at the time when she was maid of honour. The Empress
+condemned her to wear her hair brushed down over her cheeks, merely
+because the Emperor once at a ball extolled the beauty of her ears.
+
+"She was jealous, the poor Empress," the old lady is wont to close her
+narrative by declaring, and then, raising her eyes to heaven, she says,
+with a deprecatory shrug, "Of me!" What she likes best to tell,
+however, is how the Emperor once, when he honoured her with a morning
+call, had with the greatest patience kindled her fire in the fireplace,
+whereupon she had exclaimed, "Ah, Sire, if Europe could behold you
+now!"
+
+The artistic element collects about Natalie.
+
+On the day when Edgar and Zino are sent to the Lipinskis' to observe
+Stella and Monsieur Cabouat, the artistic element is represented by a
+pianist of much pretension and with his fingers stuck into india-rubber
+thimbles, and besides by Signor della Seggiola.
+
+Della Seggiola, without his gray velvet cap, in a black dress-coat,
+looks freshly washed and--immensely unhappy. His comfortable, barytone
+self-possession stands him in no stead in this cool atmosphere: he has
+no opportunity to produce the jokes and merry quips with which he is
+wont to enliven his scholars during his lessons. Restless and awkward,
+he goes from one arm-chair to another, is absorbed in admiration of a
+piece of Japanese lacquer, and breathes a sigh of relief when he
+is asked to sing something, which seems to him far easier in a
+drawing-room than to talk.
+
+The pianist, on the contrary, needs a deal of urging before he consents
+to pound away fiercely at the Pleyel piano as though he were a personal
+enemy of the maker.
+
+"I have a great liking for artists," Madame Lipinski, after watching
+the barytone through her eye-glass, declares to her neighbour Prince
+Suwarin, who is known in Parisian society by the nickname of _memento
+mori_, "but they seem to me like hounds,--delightful to behold in the
+open air, but mischievous in a drawing-room. One always dreads lest
+they should upset something. Natalie disagrees with me: she likes to
+have them in the house; she is exactly my opposite, my daughter."
+
+In this Prince Capito agrees with her, and hence his regard for
+Natalie.
+
+It is about half-past ten when Edgar and Zino enter the Lipinski
+drawing-room. After Edgar has paid his respects to both ladies of the
+house,--a ceremony much prolonged by Madame Lipinski,--he looks about
+for Stella, and perceives her directly in the centre of the room,
+seated on a yellow divan from which rises a tall camellia-tree with red
+blossoms, beside Zino. He is about to approach her, when he feels a
+hand upon his arm. He turns. Stasy stands beside him, affected,
+languishing, in a youthful white gown, a bouquet of roses on her
+breast, and a huge feather fan in her hand.
+
+"What an unexpected pleasure!" she murmurs.
+
+As just at this moment a young lady, a pupil of the pianist, has seated
+herself at the piano, to play a bolero, Edgar is obliged to keep quiet,
+and cannot help being detained beside the wicked old fairy; nay, he is
+even pinned down in a chair beside her.
+
+The assemblage listens in silence to the young performer's first
+effort; but when the Spanish dance is followed by a Swedish 'reverie'
+the silence ceases. The hum of conversation rises throughout the
+room,--conversation conducted in that half-whisper which reminds one of
+the low murmur of faded leaves. The first to begin it was Zino.
+
+"I do not understand how such delicate hands can have so hard a touch,"
+he whispers, leaning a little towards Stella, with a significant glance
+towards the narrow-chested little American at the piano. "Dummy
+instruments ought always to be provided for these drawing-room
+performances of young ladies: there would be just as much opportunity
+for the performers to display their beautiful hands, and the misery of
+the audience would be greatly alleviated."
+
+Stella laughs a little, a very little. She is melancholy to-night. Zino
+thinks of the sword of Damocles suspended above her fair head, and
+pities her. For a moment he is compassionately silent; then, espying
+Anastasia, he says, "I should like to know how the Gurlichingen comes
+here. She is a person of whom, were I Natalie, I should steer clear."
+
+"To steer clear of the Gurlichingen against her will is almost as
+difficult as to steer clear of an epidemic disease; she steals upon us
+perfectly unawares," says Stella, with a slight shrug.
+
+"Of all antipathetic women whom I have ever encountered, the
+Gurlichingen is the most antipathetic," the Prince boldly asseverates.
+"Her smile is peculiarly agreeable. It always reminds me of Captain
+White's Oriental pickles,--'the most exquisite compound of sweet and
+sour.' At Nice they called her the death's-head with forget-me-not
+eyes. To-night she looks like a skeleton at a masquerade. Just look at
+her! If she only would not show all her thirty-two teeth at once!"
+
+"Where is she?" asks Stella, slightly turning her head. So great has
+been her dread of perceiving somewhere her menacing destiny, Monsieur
+de Hauterive, that hitherto she has not looked about at all.
+
+"There, between Rohritz and that flower-table, there----"
+
+By 'Rohritz' Stella has been wont for weeks to understand the husband
+of Therese; she has not yet heard of Edgar's arrival in Paris. She
+raises her eyes, and starts violently. He is here in the same room with
+her, and has not even taken the trouble to bid her good-evening. Good
+heavens! what of that? How many minutes will pass before Monsieur de
+Hauterive comes to ask her to redeem Therese Rohritz's pledged word?
+and then---- The blood mounts to her cheeks.
+
+"_Sapristi!_" Zino thinks to himself, "can it be possible that my
+brother-in-law has been keener of vision than my very clever sister?"
+
+"Do you not think, Baron Rohritz," Stasy meanwhile remarks to the
+victim still fettered to her side, "that Prince Capito pays too marked
+attention to our little friend Stella?"
+
+"That is his affair," Edgar replies, coldly.
+
+"And what does your sister-in-law say to Stella's conduct with Capito?"
+
+"My sister-in-law evidently has no fault whatever to find with the
+young lady, for this very day she praised her in the warmest terms."
+
+"Yes, yes," Stasy murmurs; "Therese, they say, has taken Stella under
+her wing."
+
+"She is very fond of her."
+
+"Yes, yes; all Paris is aware that Therese,"--to speak all the more
+familiarly of her distinguished acquaintances the less intimate she is
+with them is one of Stasy's disagreeable characteristics,--"that
+Therese has set herself the task of marrying Stella well. If this be so
+she ought to advise the girl to conduct herself somewhat more
+prudently, or the little goose will soon have compromised herself so
+absolutely that it will be impossible to find a respectable match for
+her. Do you know that for Stella's sake Zino has joined della
+Seggiola's class?"
+
+"Would you make Stella Meineck responsible for Prince Capito's
+eccentricities?"
+
+"Granted that it was not in consequence of her direct permission, I do
+not say it was. But she makes appointments with him in the Louvre;
+and"--Stasy's eyes sparkle with fiendish triumph--"she visits him at
+his lodgings. A very worthy and truthful friend of mine has rooms
+opposite the Prince's in the Rue d'Anjou, and she lately saw Stella,
+closely veiled, pass beneath the archway of his----"
+
+"Absurd!" Rohritz exclaims, indignantly; and, without allowing her to
+finish, he leaves her very unceremoniously to go to Stella. But before
+he can make his way among the various trains, and the thicket of
+furniture of a Parisian drawing-room, to the yellow divan, some one
+else has taken the place beside Stella just vacated by Zino,--a
+handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty, well dressed, correct in
+his appearance, but not distinguished, although it would be impossible
+to describe what is lacking. There is something brand-new, stiff,
+shiny, about him. Between him and a dandy of the purest water, like
+Capito, for instance, there is the same difference that is to be found
+between a piece of genuine old Meissner porcelain and some of modern
+manufacture.
+
+"Who is the man with the red face and peaked moustache beneath the
+camellia there?" Edgar asks his old acquaintance Prince Suwarin, whom
+he has just met.
+
+"That is a certain Cabouat de Hauterive, a millionaire, who is very
+fond of pretty things," replies Suwarin. "A little while ago he bought
+a superb Rousseau for his gallery, and now, they say, he intends to buy
+a pretty wife for his house. But he is absolutely lacking in the very
+_A_, _B_, _C_ of aesthetic knowledge. The picture-dealer, Arthur
+Stevens, selected his Rousseau for him. I should like to know who found
+a wife for him. Whoever it was had good taste, I must say. The stupid
+fellow brags to all his acquaintances of the beauty of his new
+acquisition. She's a countrywoman of yours, if I'm not mistaken,--the
+young girl there beside him. She is simply divine!"
+
+In fact, she is exquisitely lovely. How can Stasy presume to slander
+her so brutally? Truly it would be difficult to imagine anything
+more modest, more innocent, than the slender creature beside that
+broad-shouldered parvenu! Her elbows pressed close to her sides, her
+hands in her lap, with drooping head she sits there deadly pale, and
+evidently trembling with dread, as if awaiting sentence of death.
+
+"It is a crime to force a young girl thus," Rohritz mutters between his
+set teeth. "I would not for the world have Therese's work to answer
+for. Fool that I am!--fool!"
+
+Every drop of blood in his veins boils; for a moment it seems as
+if the sight of that pale, sad, child-like face must rob him of all
+self-control, as if thus at the last moment he must snatch her from the
+glittering, terrible fate to which she has devoted herself and bear her
+off in his arms, far, far away, to a peaceful green country where in
+the dreamy evening twilight stands a white castle in the shade of a
+mighty linden, where the odour of the linden-blossoms mingles on the
+evening breeze with the fragrance of the large, pale roses which look
+up from the dark verdure to the blue evening skies, where the music of
+gently-rustling leaves blends sadly with the sobbing ripple of the
+Save!
+
+None but a maniac, however, would in our civilized century yield to
+such an impulse. Edgar is by no means a maniac: he is even too well
+bred to show the slightest outward sign of his agitation. Calmly, his
+eye-glass in his eye, he stands beside Suwarin and answers intelligibly
+and connectedly his questions as to the new Viennese ballet.
+
+Stella Meineck has less self-control. While Monsieur in the most
+insinuating minor tones is preluding the momentous question, she is
+vainly trying to convince herself of all that should force her to
+receive his suit with joyful gratitude from the hand of fate as a
+gift of God. She recalls the petty poverty of the life that lies behind
+her, the endless, monotonous misery of the future in galoches and
+water-proof that lies before her, the hotel-bill that is not paid, the
+golden brooch she has been obliged to sell to buy two pair of new
+gloves,--everything, in short, that is hopeless and comfortless in her
+life. Oh, she will be sensible, will accept his offer. There,--now he
+has put the great question, so distinctly, so clearly, that no pretence
+of misunderstanding that might delay the necessity for her reply is
+possible. She catches her breath; her heart beats as if it would break;
+black misty clouds float before her eyes; there is a sound in her ears
+as of the rushing of a far-distant stream. She raises her head, and is
+about to speak, when her eyes meet Edgar's; and if instant death were
+to be the consequence of her refusal, her consent is no longer
+possible.
+
+"You are very--very kind," she stammers, imploringly, "Monsieur de
+Hauterive, but I cannot--I cannot--forgive me, but--I cannot."
+
+A moment more, and she is sitting alone beneath the camellia-bush.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                            ROHRITZ DREAMS.
+
+
+"She has given him the sack."
+
+"So it seems."
+
+"A pretty affair! How pleased Therese will be!"
+
+The speakers are Capito and Edgar as they leave the Rue de la Bruyere,
+where the small hotel which the Lipinskis have rented is situated, and
+walk along under the blue-black heavens glittering with millions of
+stars, to the more animated part of Paris.
+
+"Yes, Therese will be pleased," Edgar murmurs, repeating Zino's words.
+
+"It serves her right," Zino says, laughing. "I must confess, Stella
+ought not to have let matters go so far; but I cannot help liking it in
+her that she refused the fellow. Natalie and I were looking at her; it
+was immensely funny,--and yet so sad. Ah, that poor, distressed, pale
+face! After it was all over, Natascha--she has lately grown very
+intimate with Stella--called the girl into a little private boudoir,
+where the poor child began to sob bitterly. Natascha kissed her and
+comforted her, I brought her a cup of tea, and we gradually soothed
+her."
+
+"Disgusting creature, that Cabouat!" growls Rohritz.
+
+"In my opinion he is an awkward, common snob," says Zino, "and if I am
+not mistaken he will shortly prove himself to be so in the eyes of
+every one. The affair cannot fail to be unpleasant, since he has been
+boasting everywhere that he intended to marry a most beautiful
+Austrian, a friend of Madame de Rohritz, a charming young girl, very
+highly connected, and with no dowry."
+
+"He is at perfect liberty to say that at the last moment he changed his
+mind," Rohritz remarks, casually.
+
+"I rather think he'll not content himself with that. _Ca_, you are
+coming with me to the masked ball at the opera?"
+
+"Not exactly. I am going to bed."
+
+"Indolent, degenerate race!" Zino jeers. "What is to become of Paris,
+if this indifference to all gaiety gets the upper hand? I dreamed last
+night of a white domino: I am going to look for it." So saying, he
+leaves Edgar, and has walked on a few steps, when he hears himself
+recalled.
+
+"Capito! Capito!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Pray get me an invitation to the Fanes' ball; it is short notice,
+but----"
+
+"All right: that's of no consequence at an American's ball," Zino
+replies, and hurries on to his goal. The two men turn their steps in
+opposite directions. Capito hastens back into the heart of Paris, where
+the garish light from gas-jets and lamps illuminates a night life as
+busy as that of the day, and Rohritz passes along the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, towards the Rue Villiers. Around him all is quiet; the few
+shops are closed; an occasional pedestrian passes, his coat-collar
+drawn up over his ears, and humming some _cafe-chantant_ air, or a
+carriage with coach-lamps sparkles along the middle of the street like
+a huge firefly. The street-cars are no longer running: the street is
+but dimly lighted. The Dumas monument looms, clumsy and awkward, on its
+huge pedestal in the little square on the Place Malesherbes.
+
+A thousand delightful thoughts course through Rohritz's brain. What a
+pleasant hour he has had talking with Stella at the Lipinskis'! At
+first she was stiff towards him, but gradually, slowly, she thawed into
+the loveliest, most child-like confidence. He will wait no longer. At
+the Fanes' ball, the next evening but one, he will confess all to her.
+What will she reply? Blind as are all mortals to the future, he looks
+back, and seeks her answer in the past. Slowly, slowly, he passes in
+review all the lovely summer days which he has spent with her, to that
+evening when he carried her in his arms through the drenching rain
+across the slippery, muddy road. Again he sees the windows of the
+little inn gleam yellow through the gloom; he hears Stella's soft word
+of thanks as he puts her down on the threshold. The picture changes. He
+sees a large, watery moon gleaming through prismatic clouds, sees a
+little skiff by the shore of a dark, swollen stream, and in the skiff,
+at his--Edgar's--feet, kneels a slender girl in a light dress,
+trembling with distress, her eyes imploringly raised to his, her
+delicate hands clasping his arm.
+
+He bends over her. "Stella, my poor, dear, unreasonable child!" He has
+lifted her, clasps her in his arms, presses his lips upon her golden
+hair, her eyes, her mouth---- With a sudden start he rouses from his
+dream to find that he has run against a passer-by, who is saying,
+crossly, "_Mais comment donc?_ Is not the pavement wide enough for
+two?" And, looking up, Edgar perceives that he has already passed ten
+numbers beyond his brother's hotel.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+                           A SPRAINED ANKLE.
+
+
+"My dear Rohritz,--
+
+"Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families! As I was
+escorting my cousin in a ride yesterday, my horse slipped and fell on
+the ice, and I sprained my ankle. Was there ever anything so stupid! If
+it could be called a misfortune for which one could be pitied; but no,
+'tis a mere tiresome annoyance. Ridiculous! And I am engaged to dance
+the cotillon at the Fanes' with Stella Meineck. Old fellow as I am, I
+had really looked forward to this pleasure. _Eh bien!_ all the massage
+in the world will not enable me to put my foot on the ground before the
+end of a week. Have the kindness, as they say in your native Vienna, to
+dance the cotillon in my stead with our fair star. Send me a line to
+say that you agree, or come and tell me so yourself.
+
+"Is Therese going to the ball? Tell her from me to be nice to Stella,
+and not to reckon it against her that, in spite of a moment of
+indecision induced by the distinguished eloquence of my very clever
+little sister, she has behaved nobly and honestly throughout,--in
+short, just as was to be expected of her. Adieu! Yours forever,
+
+                                                     "Capito."
+
+
+Such is the letter Edgar receives the second morning after the
+Lipinskis' soiree, while he is breakfasting with his brother in the
+latter's smoking-room.
+
+"Zino?" asks Edmund, looking up from his 'Figaro,' the reading of which
+is as much a part of his breakfast as are the fragrant black coffee and
+the yellowish Viennese bread with Norman butter.
+
+"Read it," Edgar replies, as he scribbles with a lead-pencil on a
+visiting-card, "I am quite at your disposal," and hands it to the
+waiting servant.
+
+"He's a fool!" the elder Rohritz remarks, handing back the note to his
+brother. "He knows perfectly well that you do not dance."
+
+"But one can talk through a cotillon," Edgar says, with as much
+indifference as he can assume.
+
+"You have consented?"
+
+"I could not do otherwise. Stella is a stranger in Paris: it might be a
+source of annoyance to her to have no partner for the cotillon. If at
+the last moment she should find a more desirable partner than myself, I
+am of course ready to retire. _A propos_, is Therese going to the ball?
+Her cold is better?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What kind of ball is it?"
+
+"A kind of public ball in a wealthy private house, given by immensely
+wealthy Americans, who know nobody, whom nobody knows, and who arrange
+an entertainment from the Arabian Nights, that they may be talked of,
+mentioned in 'Figaro,' and laughed at in society. Only three weeks ago
+there was no end of ridicule heaped upon Mrs. and Mr. Fane, unknown
+grandees from California, when it was reported that they wished to give
+a ball. Nobody dreamed of accepting their invitation; but Mrs. Fane was
+clever enough to induce a couple of women of undeniable fashion to be
+her 'lady patronesses,' and when the rumour spread that the Duchess
+of ---- had accepted there was a perfect rage for invitations. Every
+one declared, '_Cela sera drole!_' Every one is going. With the best
+Parisian society there will of course be found people whom one sees
+nowhere else. I wonder how many of the guests will take sufficient
+notice of the host and hostess to recognize them in the street the next
+day? But it will certainly be a beautiful ball, and an amusing one.
+Stella is going with the Lipinskis, I believe. I am curious to see how
+she will look in a ball-dress,--charming, of course, but rather too
+thin."
+
+In the course of the morning Edgar drops in upon Capito, and finds him,
+in half-merry, half-irritated mood, stretched upon a lounge which is
+covered by a bearskin, the head of the animal gnashing its teeth at the
+Prince's feet. Of course Capito's rooms form a tasteful chaos of
+Oriental rugs, Turkish embroideries, interesting bibelots, and charming
+pictures. Throughout their arrangement, from the antique silken
+hangings veined with silver that cover the walls, to the low divans and
+chairs, there runs a suggestion of effeminate, Oriental luxury, in
+whimsical contrast with the proverbially vigorous personality of the
+Prince, hardened as it has been by every species of manly sport and
+exercise. The atmosphere is heavy with the fragrance of a gardenia
+shrub in full bloom, the odour of cigarettes, and the aroma of some
+subtle Indian perfume. A tall palm lifts its leaves to the ceiling.
+Half a dozen French novels, two guitars, and a mandolin lie within
+Zino's reach. He wears a queer smoking-jacket of blue silk faced with
+red, and his foot is swathed in towels.
+
+"I'm delighted to see you! Sit down. 'Tis most annoying, this sprain of
+mine. But what do you say to the pleasure to which you have fallen
+heir?"
+
+"In fact, I never dance," Rohritz makes reply, "but, to oblige
+you----" Edgar's eyes are wandering here and there through the room,
+and suddenly rest upon a certain object.
+
+"Ah, 'tis my Watteau that attracts you!" Capito observes. "A pretty
+little picture. I bought it at the Hotel Drouot a while ago for a mere
+song,--five thousand francs."
+
+"Five thousand francs! Ridiculous," says Rohritz. "The picture is
+really lovely. But it was not the Watteau alone that attracted my
+attention, but----" He points to two or three pictures which are turned
+with their faces to the wall.
+
+"Ah! ah!" the Prince laughs. "You wish to know what led to that
+prudential measure? Well, I have had a visit from ladies."
+
+"From whom?" Rohritz asks, absently.
+
+"Unasked I should probably have told you, but in view of such ill-bred
+curiosity I am mute," Zino replies, still laughing.
+
+"Hm!--evidently a woman of character," Rohritz observes, indifferently.
+
+"Of course: 'tis the only kind with whom I can endure of late to
+associate. If you but knew how bored I was at the opera ball the other
+night! I was made ill by the bad air. The feminine element must always
+play a large part in my life; but, you see, of late I can tolerate none
+but the most refined, the most distinguished of the species. We are
+strange creatures, we men of the world: in the matter of cigars, wine,
+horses, we always require the best, while with regard to women we are
+sometimes satisfied with what----"
+
+The arrival of a fresh caller, one of Capito's sporting friends,
+interrupts these interesting reflections. Rohritz takes his leave.
+
+The same day he is driving by chance through the Rue d'Anjou, when his
+attention is attracted by a slender, graceful, girlish figure hurrying
+along, evidently anxious to reach her destination.
+
+Is not that Stella? He leans out of the carriage window, but it is
+dark, and she is closely veiled. And yet he could swear that it is she.
+She vanishes in the Hotel ----, in the house where he called upon Zino
+Capito this very day.
+
+For one brief moment all the evil that Stasy said of Stella confuses
+his brain; then he compresses his lips: he cannot believe evil of her.
+A malicious chance has maligned her. She must have a double in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+                              LOST AGAIN.
+
+
+How Stella has looked forward to this ball! how carefully and bravely
+she has cleared away all the obstacles which seemed at first to stand
+in the way of her pleasure! how eagerly and industriously she has
+gathered together her little store of ornaments, has tastefully
+renovated her old Venetian ball-dress! how she has exulted over Zino's
+note, in which with kindly courtesy he has begged her to accord to his
+friend Edgar Rohritz the pleasure he is obliged to deny himself! And
+now--now the evening has come; her ball-dress lies spread out on the
+sofa of the small drawing-room at the 'Three Negroes;' but Stella is
+lying on her bed in her little bedroom, in the dark, sobbing bitterly.
+For the second time she has lost the _porte-bonheur_ which her dying
+father put on her arm three--nearly four years before, and which was to
+bring her happiness. She noticed only yesterday that the little chain
+which she had had attached to it for safety was broken, but the clasp
+seemed so strong that she postponed taking it to be repaired, and
+to-day as she was coming home, about five o'clock, fresh and gay, her
+cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of anticipation,
+and laden with all sorts of packages, she perceived that her bracelet
+was gone. In absolute terror, she went from shop to shop, wherever she
+had made a purchase, always with the same imploring question on her
+lips as to whether they had not found a little _porte-bonheur_ with a
+pendant of rock-crystal containing a four-leaved clover,--a silly,
+inexpensive trifle, of no value to any one save herself. But in vain!
+
+Almost beside herself, she finally returned to her home, and told her
+mother of her bitter distress; but the Baroness only shrugged her
+shoulders at her childish superstition, and went on writing with
+extraordinary industry. She has lately determined to edit an abstract
+of her work on 'Woman's Part in the Development of Civilization,' for a
+book-agent with whom she is in communication, and who undertakes to
+sell unsalable literature. It seems that the abstract will fill several
+volumes! In the midst of Stella's distress, the Baroness begins to
+bewail to her daughter her own immense superabundance of ideas, which
+makes it almost impossible for her to express herself briefly. And so
+Stella, after she has hearkened to the end of her mother's lament,
+slips away with tired, heavy feet, and a still heavier heart, to her
+bedroom, and there sobs on the pillow of her narrow iron bedstead as if
+her heart would break.
+
+There comes a knock at the door.
+
+"Who is it?" she asks, half rising, and wiping her eyes.
+
+"Me!" replies a kindly nasal voice, a voice typical of the Parisian
+servant. Stella recognizes it as that of the chambermaid.
+
+"Come in, Justine. What do you want?"
+
+"Two bouquets have come for Mademoiselle,--two splendid bouquets. Ah,
+it is dark here; Mademoiselle has been taking a little rest, so as to
+be fresh for the ball; but it is nine o'clock. Mademoiselle ought to
+begin to dress: it is always best to be in time. Shall I light a
+candle?"
+
+"If you please, Justine."
+
+The maid lights the candles.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaims in dismay when she sees Stella's sad, swollen face,
+"Mademoiselle is in distress! Good heavens! what has happened? Has
+Mademoiselle had bad news?--some one dead whom she loves?"
+
+Any German maid at sight of the girl's disconsolate face would have
+suspected some love-complication; the French servant would never think
+of anything of the kind in connection with a respectable young lady.
+
+"No, Justine, but I have lost a _porte-bonheur_,--a _porte-bonheur_
+that my father gave me a little while before he died,--and it is sure
+to mean some misfortune. I know something dreadful will happen to me at
+the ball. I would rather stay at home. But there would be no use in
+that: my fate will find me wherever I am: it is impossible to hide from
+it."
+
+"Ah," sighs Justine, "I am so sorry for Mademoiselle! But Mademoiselle
+must not take the matter so to heart: the _porte-bonheur_ will
+be found; nothing is lost in Paris. We will apply to the
+police-superintendent, and the _porte-bonheur_ will be found. Ah,
+Mademoiselle would not believe how many lost articles I have had
+brought back to me! Will not Mademoiselle take a look at the bouquets?"
+And the Parisian maid whips off the cotton wool and silver-paper that
+have enveloped the flowers. "_Dieu! que c'est beau!_" cries Justine,
+her brown, good-humoured face beaming with delight beneath the frill of
+her white cap. "Two cards came with the flowers; there----"
+
+Stella grasps the cards. The bouquet of gardenias and fantastic orchids
+comes from Zino; the other, of half-opened, softly-blushing Malmaison
+roses and snowdrops, is Edgar's gift.
+
+In their arch-loveliness, carelessly tied together, the flowers look as
+if they had come together in the cold winter, to whisper of the
+delights of spring and summer,--of the time when earth and sunshine,
+now parted by a bitter feud, shall meet again with warm, loving kisses
+of reconciliation.
+
+Zino's orchids and gardenias lie neglected on the cold gray marble top
+of a corner table; with a dreamy smile, in the midst of her tears,
+Stella buries her face among the roses, which remind her of Erlach
+Court.
+
+"Mademoiselle will find her _porte-bonheur_ again; I am sure of it; I
+have a presentiment," Justine says, soothingly. "But now Mademoiselle
+must begin to make herself beautiful. Madame has given me express
+permission to help her."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+At this same hour a certain bustle reigns in the dressing-room of the
+Princess Oblonsky. Costly jewelry, barbaric but characteristically
+Russian in design and setting, gleams from the dark velvet lining of
+various half-opened cases in the light of numberless candles. In a
+faded sky-blue dressing-gown trimmed with yellow woollen lace, Stasy is
+standing beside a workwoman from Worth's, who is busy fastening large
+solitaires upon the Princess's ball-dress. The air is heavy and
+oppressive with the odour of veloutine, hot iron, burnt hair, and
+costly, forced hot-house flowers. Monsieur Auguste, the hair-dresser,
+has just left the room. Beneath his hands the head of the Princess has
+become a masterpiece of artistic simplicity. Instead of the
+conventional feathers, large, gleaming diamond stars crown the
+beautiful woman's brow. She is standing before a tall mirror, her
+shoulders bare, her magnificent arms hanging by her sides, in the
+passive attitude of the great lady who, without stirring herself, is to
+be dressed by her attendants. Her maid is kneeling behind her, with her
+mouth full of pins, busied in imparting to the long trailing muslin and
+lace petticoat the due amount of imposing effect.
+
+Although half a dozen candles are burning in the candelabra on each
+side of the mirror, although the entire apartment is illuminated by the
+light of at least fifty other candles, a second maid, and Fraeulein von
+Fuhrwesen, now quite domesticated in the Princess's household, are
+standing behind the Princess, each with a candle, in testimony of their
+sympathy with the maid at work upon the petticoat.
+
+Yes, Sophie Oblonsky is going to the Fanes' ball: she knows that Edgar
+will be there.
+
+At last every diamond is fastened upon the ball-dress, among its
+trimming of white ostrich-feathers. The task now is to slip the robe
+over the Princess's head without grazing her hair even with a touch as
+light as that of a butterfly's wing. This is the true test of the
+dressing-maid's art. The girl lifts Worth's masterpiece high, high in
+the air: the feat is successfully accomplished. In all Paris to-night
+there is no more beautiful woman than the Princess Oblonsky in her
+draperies of brocade shot with silver, the diamond _riviere_ on her
+neck, and the diamond stars in her hair. The Fuhrwesen kneels before
+her in adoration to express her enthusiasm, and Stasy exclaims,--
+
+"You are ravishing! Do you know what I said in Cologne to little
+Stella, who, as I told you, was so desperately in love with Edgar
+Rohritz? 'Beside Sonja the beauty of other women vanishes: when she
+appears, we ordinary women cease to exist.'"
+
+"Exaggerated nonsense, my dear!" Sonja says, smiling graciously, and
+lightly touching her friend's cheek with her lace handkerchief. "But
+now hurry and make yourself beautiful."
+
+"Yes, I am going. I really cannot tell you how eagerly I am looking
+forward to this ball. I feel like a child again."
+
+"So I see," Sonja rallies her. "Make haste and dress; when you are
+ready I will put the diamond pins in your hair, myself." And when Stasy
+has left the room the Princess says, turning to Fraeulein von Fuhrwesen,
+"I only hope Anastasia will enjoy herself: it is solely for her sake
+that I have been persuaded to go to this ball; I would far rather stay
+at home, my dear Fuhrwesen, and have you play me selections from
+Wagner."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+                            THE FANES' BALL.
+
+
+Yes, the Fanes' ball is a splendid ball, one of the most beautiful
+balls of the season, and fulfils every one's expectations. Not one of
+the artistic effects that puzzle newspaper-reporters and delight the
+public is lacking,--neither fountains of eau-de-cologne, nor tables of
+flowers upon which blocks of ice gleam from among nodding ferns, nor
+mirrors and chandeliers hung with wreaths of roses, nor the legendary
+grape-vine with colossal grapes. The crown of all, however, is the
+conservatory, in which, among orange-trees and magnolias in full bloom,
+gleam mandarin-trees full of bright golden fruit. There are lovely,
+secluded nooks in this Paradise, where has been conjured up in the
+unfriendly Northern winter all the luxuriance of Southern vegetation.
+Large mirrors here and there prevent what might else be the monotony of
+the scene.
+
+The company is rather mixed. It almost produces the impression of the
+appearance at a first-class theatre of a troop of provincial actors,
+with here and there a couple of stars,--stars who scarcely condescend
+to play their parts. Most of the guests do not recognize the host; and
+those who suspect his presence in the serious little man in a huge
+white tie and with a bald head, whom they took at first for the master
+of ceremonies, avoid him. His entire occupation consists in gliding
+about with an unhappy face in the darkest corners, now and then timidly
+requesting some one of the guests to look at his last Meissonier. When
+the guest complies with the request and accompanies him to view the
+Meissonier, Mr. Fane always replies to the praise accorded to the
+picture in the same words: "I paid three hundred thousand francs for
+it. Do you think Meissoniers will increase in value?"
+
+The hostess is more imposing in appearance than her bald-headed spouse.
+Her gown comes from Felix, and is trimmed with sunflowers as big as
+dinner-plates,--which has a comical effect. Therese Rohritz shakes her
+head, and whispers to a friend, "How that good Mrs. Fane must have
+offended Felix, to induce him to take such a cruel revenge!" But except
+for her gown, and the fact that she cannot finish a single sentence
+without introducing the name of some duke or duchess, there is nothing
+particularly ridiculous about her.
+
+Yet, criticise the entertainment and its authors as you may, one and
+all must confess that rarely has there been such an opportunity to
+admire so great a number of beautiful women, and that the most
+beautiful of all, the queen of the evening, is the Princess Oblonsky.
+Anywhere else it would excite surprise to find her among so many women
+of unblemished reputation; but it is no greater wonder to meet her here
+than at a public ball. Anywhere else people would probably stand aloof
+from her; here they approach her curiously, as they would some theatric
+star whom they might meet at a picnic in an inn ball-room.
+
+Perhaps her beauty would not be so completely victorious over that of
+her sister women were she not the only guest who has bestowed great
+pains on her toilette. All the other feminine guests who make any
+pretensions to distinction seem to have entered into an agreement to be
+as shabby as possible. As it would be hopeless to attempt to rival the
+Fane millions, they choose at least to prove that they despise them.
+
+One of the shabbiest and most rumpled among many dowdy gowns is that
+worn by Therese Rohritz, who, pretty woman as she is, looks down with
+evident satisfaction upon her faded crepe de Chine draperies,
+remarking, with a laugh, that she had almost danced it off last summer
+at the balls at the casino at Trouville.
+
+Her husband is not quite pleased with such evident neglect of her dress
+on his wife's part, nor does he at all admire Therese's careless way of
+looking about her through her eye-glass and laughing and criticising.
+He must always be too good an Austrian to be reconciled to what is
+called _chic_ in Paris. There is the same difference between his
+Austrian arrogance and Parisian arrogance that there is between pride
+and impertinence. He thinks it all right to hold aloof from a parvenu,
+to avoid his house and his acquaintance; but to go to the house of the
+parvenu, to be entertained in his apartments, to eat his ices and drink
+his champagne, to pluck the flowers from his walls, and in return to
+ignore himself and to ridicule his entertainment, he does not think
+right. But whenever he expresses his sentiments upon this point to his
+wife, Therese answers him, half in German, half in French, "You are
+quite right; but what would you have? 'tis the fashion."
+
+The only person at the ball who is honestly ashamed of her modest
+toilette is Stella, and this perhaps because the first object that
+her eyes encountered when she appeared with the Lipinskis, a little
+after eleven, was the Oblonsky in all her brilliant beauty and
+faultless elegance. By her side, her white feather fan on his knee,
+sits---- Edgar von Rohritz. Stella's heart stands still; ah, yes, now
+she knows why she has lost her bracelet. All the tender, child-like
+dreams that stole smiling upon her soul at sight of his flowers die at
+once, and Stasy's words at the Cologne railway-station resound in her
+ears: "Yes, it is ridiculous to think of rivalling the Princess: when
+she appears we ordinary women cease to exist."
+
+"Yes, it is ridiculous to think of rivalling the Princess," Stella
+repeats to herself, "particularly for such a stupid, awkward,
+insignificant thing as I am."
+
+She cannot take her eyes off the beautiful woman. How she smiles upon
+him, bestowing her attention upon him alone, while a crowd of Parisian
+dandies throng about her, waiting for an opportunity to claim a word.
+There is no doubt in Stella's mind that he is reconciled with Sophie
+Oblonsky.
+
+A man will forgive a very beautiful woman everything, even the evil
+which he has heard of her, nay, he may find a mysterious charm in her
+transgressions, if she takes pains to win his favour with intelligence,
+prudence, and the necessary degree of reserve. This piece of wisdom
+Stella has gained from the French romances of which she has read
+extracts out of pure ennui as they appear daily in 'Figaro' and the
+'Gaulois.'
+
+That a man must find it difficult to shake off an old friend who
+approaches him with imploring humility, that he cannot well refuse when
+she requests him to bring her an ice, and that should she hand him her
+fan he cannot possibly lay it down on a table with a proudly forbidding
+air and then take his leave with a formal bow,--all this Stella never
+takes into consideration; and this is why she is so wretchedly unhappy
+as she seats herself beside Natalie Lipinski on a plush ottoman, near a
+table of flowers.
+
+A young Russian, a friend of the Lipinskis, begs Natalie for a waltz,
+and she takes his arm and goes into the adjoining dancing-room. Stella
+is left alone, beside old Madame Lipinski, who is just getting ready to
+relate something extremely entertaining about the Emperor Nicholas,
+when Rohritz suddenly perceives Stella. With a smiling remark he hands
+the white feather fan to a gentleman standing beside him, and hastens
+towards the young girl, paying his respects, of course, first to the
+elder lady, and then to her. If he has reckoned upon her old-time
+child-like, confiding smile, he is disappointed. She answers him
+stiffly, and thanks him for his flowers without cordiality. "How pale
+she looks!" he says to himself. "What can be the matter with her? Can
+she have cried her eyes out because she must dance the cotillon
+to-night with me instead of with Zino Capito?"
+
+"'Tis very hard that poor Capito should be disabled just at this time,"
+he remarks.
+
+"Yes, because the burden of dancing the cotillon with me devolves upon
+you," Stella replies, betraying, for the first time since he has known
+her, a degree of sensitiveness that is almost ridiculous. "I am, of
+course, perfectly ready to release you from the obligation."
+
+"That would be a readiness to rob me of a pleasure to which I had
+looked forward eagerly," he replies, gravely.
+
+"You had looked forward to it?--really?" Stella asks, with genuine
+surprise in her eyes. "Really?" And she looks down with a shake of the
+head at her poor white dress, at her entire toilette, in which nothing
+is absolutely modern save the long gloves that reach to her shoulders.
+
+It is rather remarkable that these gloves are the only thing about her
+with which Edgar Rohritz finds fault.
+
+"What charming dimples that Swedish kid must hide!" he says to himself.
+A seat beside Stella hitherto occupied by an Englishwoman with very
+sharp red elbows is vacated. Edgar takes possession of it.
+
+"Yes, I had looked forward to it," he says, "although I do not dance,
+and you will consequently be obliged to talk with me through the
+cotillon."
+
+A pause ensues. She looks down; involuntarily he does the same. His
+eyes rest upon her foot that peeps out beneath the hem of her
+ball-dress. He recalls how once, on a meadow beneath a spreading oak,
+kneeling before her he had held that foot in his hands. What a
+charming, soft, warm little foot it was! She suddenly perceives that he
+is looking at it; she withdraws it hastily, and with a half-wayward,
+half-distressed air pulls her skirt farther over her knee. Of course he
+does not smile, but he wants to. And he could reproach this girl for
+accidentally in the outline of her features recalling a woman who from
+all that he could discover concerning her was more to be pitied than
+blamed. It was odious, cruel; more than that, it was stupid!
+
+Leaning towards her, and speaking more softly than before, he says,
+gravely, "And I hope that during the cotillon you will confide to me,
+as an old friend, why you look so sad to-night."
+
+Any other girl would have understood that these words from a man of
+Edgar's great reserve of character were to pave the way for a
+declaration.
+
+Stella understands nothing of the kind.
+
+"Why I am so sad?" she replies, simply. "Because----"
+
+At this moment Natalie approaches on the arm of a blonde young man.
+
+"Count Kasin wishes to be presented to you, Stella," she says.
+
+The young man bows, and begs for a dance. Stella goes off upon his arm,
+not because she has any desire to dance, but because it would be
+disgraceful for a young girl to sit through an entire ball.
+
+"Who is that young lady?" asks an Englishman of Edgar's acquaintance.
+
+"She is an Austrian,--Baroness Stella Meineck."
+
+"Strange how like she is to that famous Greuze in the Louvre,--'_La
+Cruche cassee_'! She is charming."
+
+The words were uttered without any thought of evil, but nevertheless
+Edgar feels for a moment as if he would like to throttle the Hon. Mr.
+Harris.
+
+And why is he suddenly reminded of the girl whom he had seen this
+afternoon in the twilight hurrying along the street to vanish in the
+house where Zino has his apartments? How very like she was to Stella!
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+An hour has passed. Stella has walked through two quadrilles, has
+walked and polked with various partners, as well as she could,--that
+is, conscientiously and badly, just as she learned from a
+dancing-master eight years before, and, try as she may, she is
+conscious that she never shall take any real pleasure in this hopping
+and jumping about. Now, when the rest are just beginning fairly to
+enjoy the ball, she is tired,--quite tired. With her last partner, a
+good-humoured, gentlemanly young Austrian diplomatist, she has become
+so dizzy that in the midst of the dance she has begged to be taken back
+to Madame Lipinski. But Madame Lipinski has left her place; some one
+says she has gone to the conservatory; and thither Stella and her
+partner betake themselves.
+
+They do not find Madame Lipinski, but Stella feels decidedly better.
+The green, fragrant twilight of the conservatory has a soothing effect
+upon her nerves. The air is cool, compared with that of the ball-room;
+the roughened surface of the mosaic floor affords a pleasant change
+after the slippery smoothness of the dancing-room. Stella sinks wearily
+into an inviting low chair.
+
+"Are balls always so terribly fatiguing?" she asks her companion, with
+her usual frankness.
+
+He bows.
+
+"I did not mean to be rude," she hastily explains, "but you must
+confess that it is much pleasanter to talk comfortably here than to
+whirl about in there," pointing with her fan in the direction of the
+dancing-room.
+
+The attache, quite propitiated, takes his place upon a low seat beside
+her, and prepares for a sentimental flirtation. To his great surprise,
+Stella seems to have as little enthusiasm for flirting as for dancing.
+
+"A charming spot!" he begins. "The fragrance of these orange-blossoms
+reminds me of Nice. You have been at Nice, Baroness?"
+
+"I have been everywhere, from Madrid to Constantinople," Stella sighs;
+"and I wish I were at home. My head aches so!"--passing her hand
+wearily across her brow.
+
+"Shall I get you an ice, or a glass of lemonade?" he asks,
+good-naturedly.
+
+"I should be much obliged to you," Stella replies.
+
+"Hm! it does not look as if she were very anxious for a _tete-a-tete_
+with me," he thinks, as he leaves her.
+
+He has gone: she is alone among the fragrant flowers and the
+larged-leaved plants. Softened, but distinctly audible, the sound of
+hopping and gliding feet reaches her ears, while, now sadly caressing
+and anon merrily careless, the strains of a Strauss waltz float on the
+air. For a while she sits quite wearily, with half-closed eyes,
+thinking of nothing save "I hope the attache will stay away a long
+time!" Mingling softly and tenderly with the music she hears the dreamy
+murmur of a miniature fountain. Why is she suddenly reminded of the
+melancholy rush of the Save, of the little canoe by the edge of the
+black water? Suddenly she hears voices in her vicinity, and, raising
+her eyes to a tall, broad mirror opposite, she beholds, framed
+in by the gold-embroidered hangings of a heavy portiere, a striking
+picture,--the Princess Oblonsky and Edgar. They are in a little boudoir
+separated from the conservatory by an open door. Without stirring,
+Stella watches the pair in the treacherous mirror. Edgar sits in a low
+arm-chair, his elbow on his knee, his head propped on his hand, and the
+Princess is opposite him. How wonderfully beautiful she is!--beautiful
+although she is just brushing away a tear.
+
+"It always makes me so ugly to cry!" Stella thinks, not without
+bitterness.
+
+The Princess's gloves and fan lie beside her; her arms are bare. With
+an expression of intense melancholy, an expression not only apparent in
+her face and in the listless droop of her arms, but also seeming to be
+shared by every fold of her dress, she leans back among the soft-hued,
+rose-coloured and gray satin cushions of a small lounge.
+
+"Strange, that we should have met at last!--at last!" she sighs. Stella
+cannot distinguish his reply, but she distinctly hears the Princess
+say, "Do you remember that waltz? How often its notes have floated
+towards us upon the breath of the roses in the long afternoons at
+Baden! How long a time has passed since then! How long----"
+
+A black mist rises before Stella's eyes. She puts up her hands to
+her ears, and, thrilling from head to foot, springs up and hurries
+away,--anywhere, anywhere,--only away from this spot,--far away!
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+At the other end of the conservatory she is doing her best to regain
+her composure and to keep back the tears, when suddenly she hears a
+light manly tread near her and the clinking of glasses.
+
+"Ah! 'tis Binsky: he has found me," Stella thinks, most unjustly
+provoked with the good-humoured attache.
+
+"I really believe, Baroness, you are playing hide-and-seek with me,"
+the young diplomatist addresses her in a tone of mild reproof.
+
+There is nothing for it but to turn round. Beside the attache, in all
+the majestic gravity of his kind, stands a lackey with a salver, from
+which she takes a glass of lemonade.
+
+After the servant has withdrawn, Count Binsky says, with a laugh, "I
+have been looking for you, Baroness, in every corner of the
+conservatory. I must confess to having made interesting discoveries
+during my wanderings. Look here,"--and he shows her a white
+ostrich-feather fan with yellow tortoise-shell sticks broken in
+two,"--I found this relic in the pretty little boudoir near the place
+where I left you. Now, did you ever see anything so mutely eloquent as
+this broken fan?--the tragic culmination of a highly dramatic scene! I
+should like to know what lady had the desperate energy to reduce this
+exquisite trifle to such a state."
+
+"Perhaps there is a monogram on the fan," says Stella, her pale face
+suddenly becoming animated. "Look and see."
+
+"To be sure. I did not think of that," the young man replies, examining
+the fan. "'S. O.' beneath a coronet."
+
+"Sophie Oblonsky," says Stella.
+
+"Of course,--the Oblonsky." The attache is seized with a fit of
+merriment on the instant. "The Oblonsky,--the woman who had an affair
+with Rohritz long ago. She seemed to me this evening to have a strong
+desire to throw her chains about him afresh, but"--with a significant
+glance at the fan--"Rohritz evidently had no inclination to gratify
+her. Hm! she must have been in a bad humour,--the worthy Princess!" The
+attache laughs softly to himself, then suddenly assumes a grave,
+composed air, remembering that he is with a young girl, before whom
+such things as he has alluded to should be forbidden subjects and his
+merriment suppressed. He glances at Stella. No need to worry himself;
+she does not look in the least horrified: her white teeth just show
+between her red lips, merry dimples play about the corners of her
+mouth, and her eyes sparkle like black stars.
+
+She really does not understand how five minutes ago she could have
+wished the poor attache at the North Pole. She now thinks him extremely
+amusing and amiable. She feels so well, too,--so very well. Is it
+possible that there may be no evil omen for her in the loss of her
+bracelet? Nevertheless, try as she may to hope that it may be averted,
+a shiver of anxiety thrills her at the recollection of her lost amulet.
+
+"If the ball were only over!" she thinks.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+                             FOUND AT LAST.
+
+
+The hour of rest before the cotillon has come; the dancing-room is
+almost empty. Only a few gentlemen are selecting the places which they
+wish reserved for themselves and their partners, and a couple of
+lackeys are clearing away from this battlefield of pleasure the
+trophies left behind, of late engagements, shreds of tulle and
+tarlatan, artificial and natural flowers, here and there a torn glove,
+etc. Edgar tells himself that his hour has come, the hour when he may
+indemnify himself for ennui hitherto so heroically endured. Meanwhile,
+he goes to the buffet to refresh himself with a glass of iced
+champagne, and in hopes of finding Stella.
+
+The supper-room is in the story below the ballroom. The different
+stories are connected by an extremely picturesque staircase, decorated
+with gorgeous exotics and ending in a vestibule, or rather an
+entrance-hall, hung round with antique Flemish draperies.
+
+The buffet is magnificent, and the guests who are laying siege to it,
+especially the more distinguished among them, are conducting themselves
+after a very ill bred fashion. Edgar perceives that several of them
+have taken rather too much of Mr. Fane's fine Cliquot.
+
+He looks around in vain for Stella. In one corner he observes the
+Oblonsky, with bright eyes and sweet smiles, surrounded by a throng of
+languishing adorers; farther on, Stasy, in pale blue, with rose-buds
+and diamond pins in her hair, in a state of bliss because an American
+diplomatist is holding her gloves and a Russian prince her fan; he sees
+Therese taking some bonbons for the children. Stella is nowhere
+visible. He thinks the champagne poor, doing it great injustice, and,
+irritated, goes to the smoking-room to enjoy a cigar. The first man
+whom he sees in the large room is Monsieur de Hauterive. His face is
+very red, and he is relating something which must be very amusing, for
+he laughs loudly while he talks. The men standing around him do not
+seem to enjoy his narrative as much as he does himself. A few offensive
+words reach Edgar's ears:
+
+"_La Cruche cassee_--Stella Meineck--an Austrian--these Viennese
+girls--mistress of Prince Capito!--I have it all from the Princess
+Oblonsky!"
+
+"Would you have the kindness to repeat to me what you have just been
+telling these gentlemen?" Rohritz says, approaching the group and with
+difficulty suppressing manifestation of his anger.
+
+"I really do not know, monsieur, by what right you interfere in a
+conversation about what does not concern you," Cabouat manages to
+reply, speaking thickly. "May I ask who----"
+
+Edgar hands him his card. The other gentlemen are about to withdraw,
+but Edgar says, "What I have to say to Monsieur de Hauterive all are
+welcome to hear: the more witnesses I have the better I shall be
+pleased. I wish to call him to account for a slander, as vile as it is
+absurd, which he has dared to repeat, with regard to a young lady, an
+intimate friend of my family. You said, monsieur----"
+
+"I said what every one knows, what ladies of the highest rank will
+confirm, what the Princess Oblonsky has long been aware of, and the
+proof of which I obtained to-day."
+
+"Might I beg to know in what this said proof consists?" Edgar asks,
+contemptuously.
+
+Monsieur de Hauterive, with an evil smile upon his puffy red lips,
+draws from his vest-pocket a golden chain to which is attached a
+crystal locket containing a four-leaved clover.
+
+With a hasty movement Edgar takes the trinket from him, and searches
+for the star engraved upon the crystal.
+
+"You know the bracelet?" asks de Hauterive.
+
+"Yes," says Edgar.
+
+"I found it on the staircase of Prince Capito's lodgings. When I rang
+the Prince's bell his servant informed me that the Prince was not at
+home. As I was perfectly aware that he had been confined to a lounge
+for two days with a sprained ankle, I naturally supposed that the
+Prince had special reasons for wishing to receive no one. What
+conclusion do you draw?"
+
+Edgar's tongue is very dry in his mouth, but he instantly rejoins, "My
+conclusion is that Mademoiselle de Meineck, visiting a friend, a lady,
+who, as I happen to know, has lodgings in that house, lost her bracelet
+on the landing, and that Prince Capito has no desire to receive
+Monsieur de Hauterive."
+
+"Your judgment strikes me as kind, rather than acute," says Monsieur de
+Hauterive. "Will you kindly tell me the name of the friend lodging in
+Number ----?" he adds, with a sneer.
+
+Edgar is silent.
+
+"I thought so!" exclaims de Hauterive. "And you would debar me from
+mentioning what any unprejudiced person must admit, that----" But
+before he can utter another word his cheek burns from a blow from
+Edgar's open palm.
+
+The next moment Rohritz leaves the smoking-room, and goes out into the
+vestibule, longing for solitude and fresh air.
+
+There, among the antique hangings, the Australian ferns, and the
+Italian magnolias, among the bronze, white-toothed negroes that bear
+aloft lamps with ground-glass shades shaped like huge flower-cups, he
+stands, the little bracelet in his hand. He feels stunned; red
+and blue sparks dance before his eyes, and his throat seems choked. He
+would fain groan aloud, or dash his head against the wall, so great is
+his distress. He cannot believe it; and yet all a lover's jealous
+distrust assails him. He is perfectly aware that his defence of
+Stella was pitiably weak, his invention of a female friend lodging in
+Number ---- clumsy enough; he knows that everything combines to accuse
+her.
+
+Has he been deceived for the second time in his life? Whom can he ever
+trust, if those grave, dark, child-like eyes have been false? And
+suddenly in the midst of his torment he is possessed by overwhelming
+pity.
+
+"Poor child! poor child!" he says to himself. "Neglected, dragged about
+the world, without any one to care for her, fatherless, and the same as
+motherless!" Should he judge her? No, he will defend her, hide her
+fault, protect her from the whole world. But a stern voice within asks,
+"What protection do you mean? Will you--dare you offer her the only
+thing that can save her from the world,--your hand?" He is tortured.
+No, he cannot. And yet how desperately he loves her! Why did he not
+take her in his arms when she lay at his feet in the little skiff, and
+shield her next his heart forever? He must see her; an irresistible
+longing seizes him; yes, he must see her,--insult her, mistreat her, it
+may be,--but clasp her in his arms though he should kill her.
+
+"Why are you standing here, like Othello with Desdemona's
+handkerchief?" he suddenly hears his brother ask, close beside him.
+
+He starts, closes his fingers over the bracelet, and tries to assume an
+indifferent air.
+
+"Where is Stella?" inquires Therese, who is with her husband.
+
+"How should I know?" asks Edgar.
+
+"But some one must know! some one must find her!" she exclaims, in a
+very bad humour. "The Lipinskis have gone home, and have placed her in
+my charge, and I must wait until she is found before we too can go
+home. Ah, do you want to dance the cotillon with her? Pray find her,
+and as soon as you have done so we must go home,--instantly! I do not
+want to stay another moment." And, in a state of evident nervous
+agitation, Therese suddenly turns to her husband, and continues, "I
+cannot imagine, Edmund, how you could bring me to this ball!"
+
+"That is a little too much!" her husband exclaims, angrily. "Had I the
+faintest desire to come to this ball? Did I not try for two long weeks
+to dissuade you from coming? But you had one reply for all my
+objections: 'Marie de Stele is going too.' Since you are so determined
+never, under any circumstances, to blame yourself, blame the Duchess de
+Stele, not me."
+
+"Marie de Stele could not possibly know that a Russian diplomatist
+would bring that woman to this ball and present her as his wife."
+
+"Neither could I," rejoins her husband.
+
+"A man ought to know such things," Therese retorts; "but you never know
+anything that everybody else does not know, you never have an
+intuition; although you have been away from your own country for
+fifteen years, you are the very same simple-minded Austrian that you
+always were."
+
+"And I am proud of it!" Edmund ejaculates, angrily.
+
+"Be as proud as you please, for all I care," says Therese, as, at once
+angry and exhausted, she sinks into a leathern arm-chair. "But now, for
+heaven's sake, find Stella Meineck, that we may get away at last."
+
+Edgar has already departed in search of her. He passes through the long
+suite of rooms, for the most part empty because all the guests are in
+the dining-rooms at present.
+
+"They neither of them know anything yet," he says to himself, bitterly,
+and his heart beats wildly as he thinks, "If she can only explain it
+all!"
+
+He searches for a while in vain. At last he enters the conservatory. A
+low sound of sobbing, reminding one of some wounded animal who has
+crept into some hiding-place to die, falls upon his ear. He hurries on.
+There, in the same little boudoir where he had lately been with the
+Princess Oblonsky, Stella is cowering on a divan in the darkest corner,
+her face hidden in her hands, her whole frame convulsed with sobs.
+
+"Baroness Stella!" he says, advancing. She does not hear him. "Stella!"
+he says, more loudly, laying his hand on her arm. She starts, drops her
+hands in her lap, and gazes at him with such terrible despair in her
+eyes that for an instant he trembles for her reason. He forgets
+everything,--all that has been tormenting him; his soul is filled only
+with anxiety for her. "What is the matter? what distresses you?" he
+asks.
+
+"I cannot tell it," she replies, in a voice so hoarse, so
+agonized, that he hardly knows it for hers. "It is something
+horrible,--disgraceful! It was in the dining-room I was sitting rather
+alone, when I heard two gentlemen talking. I caught my own name, and
+then--and then--I would not believe it; I thought I had not heard
+aright then the gentlemen passed me, and one of them looked at me and
+laughed, and then--and then--I saw an English girl whom I knew at the
+Britannia, in Venice--she was with her mother, and she came up to me
+and held out her hand with a smile, but her mother pulled her back,--I
+saw her,--and she turned away. And then came Stasy----" Her eyes
+encounter Rohritz's. "Ah! you have heard it too!" She moans and puts
+her hands up to her throbbing temples. Her cheeks are scarlet; she is
+half dead with shame and horror. "You too!" she repeats. "I knew that
+something would happen to me at this ball when I found I had lost my
+bracelet again, but I never--never thought it would be so horrible as
+this! Oh, papa, papa, I only hope you did not hear,--did not see; you
+could not rest peacefully in your grave." And again she buries her face
+in her hands and sobs.
+
+A short pause ensues.
+
+"She is innocent; of course she is innocent," an inward voice exclaims
+exultantly, and Rohritz is overwhelmed with remorse for having doubted
+her for an instant. He would fain fall down at her feet and kiss the
+hem of her dress.
+
+"Be comforted: your bracelet is found," he whispers, softly. "Here it
+is!"
+
+She snatches it from him. "Ah, where did you find it?" she asks,
+eagerly, her eyes lighting up in spite of her distress.
+
+"I did not find it. Monsieur de Hauterive found it on the first landing
+of the staircase at Number ----, Rue d'Anjou," he says, speaking with
+difficulty.
+
+"Ah, I might have known! I must have lost it when I went to see my poor
+aunt Correze, and when I dropped my bundles on the stairs!" She is not
+in the least embarrassed. She evidently does not even know that Zino's
+lodgings are in the Rue d'Anjou.
+
+"Your aunt Correze?" asks Rohritz.
+
+"Do you not know about my aunt Correze?" she stammers.
+
+"Yes, I know who she is."
+
+"She was very unhappy in her first marriage," Stella goes on, now in
+extreme confusion, "very unhappy, and--and--she did not do as she
+ought; but she married Correze four years ago,--Correze, who abused
+her, and who is now giving concerts in America. She recognized me in
+the street from a photograph of me which papa sent her from Venice. She
+was so sweet to me, and yet so sad and shy, and she had her little
+daughter with her, a beautiful child, very like her, only with black
+hair. Papa once begged me to be kind to her if I ever met her, for his
+sake. What could I do? I could not ask her to come to us, for mamma
+will not hear her mentioned, and has for years burned all her letters
+unanswered. Once or twice I arranged a meeting with her in the Louvre;
+then she was taken ill, and could not go out, and wanted to see me. I
+went to see her without letting mamma know. It was not right, but--papa
+begged me to be kind to her----" Her large, dark eyes look at him
+helpless and imploring.
+
+"Poor child! your kind heart was sorely tried," he murmurs, very
+gently.
+
+"I am so glad to be able to tell some one all about it," she confesses:
+she has quite forgotten her terrible, disgraceful trial, in the
+child-like sensation of delightful security with which Rohritz always
+inspires her. The tears still shine upon her cheeks, but her eyes are
+dry. She tries to fasten the bracelet on her wrist; Rohritz kneels down
+beside her to help her; suddenly he possesses himself of the bracelet.
+
+"Stella," he whispers, softly and very tenderly, "there is no denying
+that you are very careless with your happiness. Let me keep it for you:
+it will be safer with me than with you."
+
+She looks at him, without comprehending; she is only aware of a sudden
+overwhelming delight,--why, she hardly knows.
+
+"Stella, my darling, my treasure, could you consent to marry me?--could
+you learn to enjoy life at my side?"
+
+"Learn to enjoy?" she repeats, with a smile that is instantly so deeply
+graven in his heart that he remembers it all his life afterwards.
+"Learn to enjoy?" She puts out her hands towards him; but just as he is
+about to clasp her to his heart she withdraws them, trembling, and
+turns pale. "Would you marry a girl at whom all Paris will point a
+scornful finger to-morrow?" she sobs.
+
+"Point a scornful finger at my betrothed?" he cries, indignantly. "Have
+no fear, Stella; I know the world better than you do: that finger will
+be pointed at the worthless woman whose wounded vanity invented the
+monstrous slander. There is still some _esprit de corps_ among the
+angels. Those in heaven do not permit evil to be wrought against their
+earthly sisters. One kiss, Stella, my star, my sunshine, my own
+darling."
+
+For an instant she hesitates, then shyly touches his temple with her
+soft warm lips.
+
+"One upon your gray hair," she murmurs.
+
+They suddenly hear an approaching footstep. Rohritz starts to his feet,
+but it is only his brother, who says, as he advances towards them,--
+
+"Where the deuce are you hiding, Edgar? My wife is frantic with
+impatience."
+
+"Therese must be merciful," Edgar replies, with a smile. "When for once
+one finds the flower of happiness in his pathway, one cannot say, 'I
+have no time to pluck you; my sister-in-law is waiting for me.'"
+
+"Aha!" Edmund exclaims, with a low bow. "Hm! Therese will be vexed
+because I was right, and not she; but I rejoice with all my heart, not
+because I was right, but because I could wish you no better fortune in
+this world."
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+Stella's betrothal to Edgar is now a week old. Therese was vexed at
+first at her own want of penetration, but it was an irritation soon
+soothed. She is absorbed in providing the most exquisite trousseau that
+money and taste combined can procure in Paris.
+
+Zino, too, was vexed, first that Stella should have been subjected to
+annoyance on his account, and in the second place because his temporary
+lameness prevented his challenging de Hauterive. "It was tragic enough
+not to be able to dance the cotillon with our star, but not to be able
+to fight for the star is intolerable."
+
+Thus Capito declares in a long congratulatory epistle to Edgar, adding,
+in a postscript, "The ladies in whose honour certain pictures were
+turned, as you lately observed, with their faces to the wall, were the
+Lipinskis, mother and daughter. I am betrothed to Natalie."
+
+The Princess Oblonsky has left Paris for Naples; the Fuhrwesen
+accompanied her. Monsieur de Hauterive is said to have followed her.
+Stasy is left behind in Paris, where she meditates sadly upon the
+ingratitude of human nature. She is no longer an ardent admirer of the
+Oblonsky.
+
+And the lovers?
+
+The scene is the little drawing-room with the blue furniture and
+bright carpet at the "Three Negroes." The Baroness is sitting at her
+writing-table, scribbling away with all her wonted energy at something
+or other which is never to be finished; the floor around her is strewn
+with torn and crumpled sheets of paper.
+
+From without come the sound of heavy and light wheels, the echo of
+heavy and light footsteps. But through all the noise of the streets is
+heard a dreamy, monotonous murmur, the slow drip of melting snow. A
+thaw has set in, and the water is dripping from the roofs. Sometimes
+the Baroness pauses in her writing and listens. There is something
+strangely disturbing to her in the simple sound: she does not clearly
+catch what the water-drops tell her; she no longer understands their
+speech.
+
+Beside the fire sit Edgar and Stella. His left arm is in a sling. In
+the duel with small-swords which took place a couple of days after the
+Fanes' ball he received a slight wound. Therefore there is an admixture
+of grateful pity in Stella's tenderness for him. They are sitting, hand
+clasped in hand, devising schemes and building airy castles for the
+future,--the long, fair future.
+
+"One question more, my darling," Rohritz whispers to his beautiful
+betrothed, who still conducts herself rather shyly towards him. "How do
+you mean to arrange your life?"
+
+"How do I mean--have I any decision to make?"
+
+"Indeed you have, dearest," he says, smiling. "My part in life is to
+see you happy."
+
+"How good and dear you are to me!" Stella murmurs. "How could you
+torment me so long,--so long?"
+
+"Do you suppose I was happy the while, dear love?" he whispers. Her
+reproach touches him more nearly than she thinks. How could he hesitate
+so long, is the question he now puts to himself. What has he to offer
+her, he with his weary, doubting heart, in exchange for her pure,
+fresh, untouched wealth of feeling? "But to return to my question," he
+begins afresh. "Will you live eight months in society and four months
+in the country?--or just the other way?"
+
+"Just the other way, if I may."
+
+"Jack Leskjewitsch wrote me at the close of his note of
+congratulation--the most cordial of any which I have had yet--that his
+wife wishes to sell Erlach Court, and thus deprive him of all
+temptation to retire for a second time to that Capua from a military
+life. Shall I buy Erlach Court for you, Stella,--for you?--for your
+special property?"
+
+"It would be delightful," she murmurs.
+
+"Let us be married, then, here in Paris at the embassy, and meanwhile
+have everything in readiness for us at Erlach Court. We can then make a
+tour through southern France to our home for our wedding journey."
+
+But Stella shakes her head: "No, our wedding journey must be to Zalow,
+to visit papa's grave. You see, when he gave me the four-leaved clover
+that you have round your neck now he said, 'And if ever Heaven sends
+you some great joy, say to yourself that your poor father prayed the
+dear God that it might fall to your share!' So I must go to him first
+to thank him: do you not see?"
+
+Edgar nods. Then, looking at the girl almost mournfully, he says,--
+
+"Is the joy really so great, my darling?"
+
+She makes no reply in words, but gently, almost timidly, she puts her
+rounded arm about him and leans her head on his breast.
+
+Meanwhile, the Baroness looks round. 'Tis strange how the monotonous
+melody of the falling water-drops interferes with her work. A kind of
+wondering melancholy possesses her at sight of the lovers: she turns
+away her head and lays her pen aside.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+"The world was all before them where to choose their place of rest, and
+Providence their guide," she murmurs to herself. "'Tis strange how well
+the words suit the beginning of every young marriage. And yet they are
+the last words of 'Paradise Lost.'"
+
+
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+           Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Erlach Court, by Ossip Schubin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERLACH COURT ***
+
+***** This file should be named 35541.txt or 35541.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/5/4/35541/
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.