The next morning after breakfast Erika stood again at her window,
looking out upon the magnificence of the palaces bordering the Grand
Canal, and upon the dark, sluggish water. She seemed to be looking for
the spot where the gondola the previous night had passed through the
silvery radiance of the moonlight. The burden of the plaintive song
still rang in her ears, in her nerves, in her soul:
"Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
Her grandmother entered, ready to go out, an opera-glass in her hand,
and asked her, "Erika, will you not come with me to the exhibition in
the Circolo artistico? There is a picture there of which all Venice is
talking,--a wonder of a picture, they say."
"Whom is it by?"
"By Lozoncyi."
"Ah!" Erika turned away from her grandmother, and gazed out of the
window into the broad Southern sunlight, until black specks danced
before her eyes.
"What an indignant exclamation!" her grandmother said, with a laugh.
"Your 'Ah!' sounded as if Lozoncyi were your mortal enemy. Perhaps you
resent his being in Bayreuth with--with a companion. You must not be so
strict with an artist: the society which these gentlemen, in pursuance
of their calling, are obliged to frequent, is apt to blunt their
sensibilities in that direction. Besides, he was just from Paris: such
things are usual there. We are rather more strict in our notions. It is
all the same. For my part, it is a matter of entire indifference to me
how this Herr Lozoncyi arranges his domestic affairs. Years ago I
prophesied a brilliant future for him, when our best Berlin critics
condemned his efforts as unripe fruit. Of course I feel flattered at
having been right. The vanity of being in the right is the last to die
in the human breast. At all events, he seems to have painted a really
great picture, and I thought---- But if you do not want to come with
me, you prejudiced young lady, I will go alone. Adieu, my child." She
stroked the cheek of the young girl, who had now turned away from the
window, and went towards the door.
But before she had reached it, Erika called after her: "But,
grandmother, do not be in such haste. I--I should like to take a little
walk with you, and I do not care where we go."
"Very well: I will wait."
Shortly afterwards grandmother and grand-daughter walked across the
little square behind the hotel, decorated in honour of the spring with
orange-trees and laurels in tubs, towards the Piazza San Stefano. The
day was lovely, and the streets were filled with people. Erika wore a
dark-green cloth walking-suit, that became her well. Although she gave
but little thought to her dress, with her good taste was instinctive:
she always looked like a picture, and to-day like an uncommonly
handsome picture.
"Everybody turns to look at you," her grandmother whispered to her;
"and I must confess that it is worth the trouble."
This sounded like old times. The compliment had no effect upon Erika,
but the tenderness that prompted it did the girl good. She smiled
affectionately, but shook her forefinger at the old lady.
"What? I am to take care not to spoil you?" the old Countess said, with
a laugh. "I'll answer for that. If flattered vanity could spoil, you
would be quite ruined by this time. Good heavens! I would rather you
were a little spoiled,--just a little,--and happy, instead of being as
you are, an angel,--sometimes an insufferable one, but still an
angel,--with no sunshine in your heart." She looked askance, almost
timidly, at the young girl, as if to see if she were not a little
merrier to-day than usual. No, Erika did not look merry: she looked
touched, but not merry.
"If I only knew what you want!" the grandmother sighed, half aloud.
Erika moved closer to her side. "I want nothing. I have too much," she
whispered. "You spoil me."
"How can I help it? I am seventy-two years old: how much time is left
me to delight in you? It may be all over for me to-day or to-morrow,
and then----" But when she looked again at Erika the tears were rolling
down the girl's cheeks. "Foolish child!" exclaimed the grandmother. "In
all probability I shall not die so very soon: you need not spoil your
fine eyes with crying, beforehand; but one ought to be prepared for
everything, and of course I should like to see you married to a good
husband."
She had rested her hand on Erika's arm, and hitherto the young girl in
a child-like caressing way had pressed it close to her side, but now
she extricated herself from the old lady's clasp; her lips quivered.
"Whom shall I marry?" she exclaimed, with bitter emphasis.
Then both were silent. The grandmother was conscious of the blunder she
had committed, and was furious with herself; which nevertheless would
not in the least prevent her from making another of the same kind
whenever an opportunity offered.
Erika walked stiff and haughty beside her without looking at her again.
When they reached the Circolo, after a long walk, they wandered through
the splendid, spacious rooms for some time without discovering the
object of their expedition. The spring exhibition at the Circolo was
sparsely attended: strangers had no time for modern art in Venice, and
the natives preferred a walk in such fine weather. Consequently the
pictures signed by famous modern names hung for the most part upon the
walls merely for the satisfaction of their originators. Bezzy's
landscapes the old Countess pronounced to be masterpieces, and she
became so absorbed in a sirocco by that artist that she quite forgot
the purpose for which she had come hither.
It looked almost as if Erika took more interest than her grandmother in
Lozoncyi's picture. She looked about her in search of it. From the next
room came the sound of voices, now suppressed, then loud in talk. Her
heart began to beat fast, and she directed her steps thither.
A group of six or seven men were standing in front of a large picture
which hung alone on one side of the room, probably because no other
artist had ventured to provoke comparison with it. The men standing
before it--Erika suspected, from their remarks, that they were all
artists by profession--spoke of it in low tones, as of something
sacred, which the picture was not,--far from it; but it was a
magnificent revelation of genius, and as such was something divine.
'Francesca da Rimini' was engraved upon the frame. The old subject
was strangely treated. Trees in full leaf were cut short by the
frame so that only their luxuriant foliage and blossom-laden boughs
were visible, and above them against a background of dull, gloomy
storm-clouds floated two forms closely intertwined.
Never had Erika seen two such figures living, as it were, upon canvas;
never had she seen writhing despair so revealed in every limb and
muscle. Her first sensation was one of almost angry repulsion for the
artist.
"What do you say to it?" the old Countess, who had followed Erika,
asked, rather loudly, as was her wont. "A masterpiece, is it not?"
Erika turned away. She was very pale, and she trembled from head to
foot.
"It is wonderfully beautiful," she murmured, in a low voice, "but it is
unpleasant. I feel as if it were a sin to look at it."
As they crossed the Piazza San Stefano on their way home, at the foot
of Manin's statue stood a group of five street-singers, two men and
three women, all over fifty, both men blind, one of the women one-eyed,
another hump-backed, and the third so corpulent that she looked like a
caricature.
These five monsters, the women with guitars, the men with violins, were
accompanying themselves in a love-song, their mouths wide open, and the
drawling notes issuing thence echoed from one end to the other of the
spacious Piazza. The burden of the ditty was,--
"Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
T'amo d'immenso amor."
The old Countess, with a laugh and the easy grace of a great lady,
tossed the singers a coin half-way across the Piazza. Erika frowned. A
feverish indignation possessed her. Good heavens! did the whole world
circle about one and the same thing? Must she hear it even from the
lips of these wretched cripples? She bit her lip: from the distance
came the drawling wail,--
"T'amo d'immenso amor."
"Erika, look there!"
The words are spoken by old Countess Lenzdorff in the library
of the monastery of San Lazaro, and as she speaks she plucks her
grand-daughter's sleeve.
The monastery is the same in which Lord Byron, more than half a century
ago, was taught by long-bearded monks; and the Lenzdorffs, taking
advantage of the fine weather, had been rowed over to it on the
afternoon of the day on which they had visited the exhibition at the
Circolo.
The monk who acted as their cicerone had conducted them to the library
to show them Lord Byron's signature and his portrait, a small,
authentic likeness. In addition he showed them many likenesses of his
lordship which were by no means authentic, but which represented him in
various costumes and at various periods of his existence, and which it
was hoped romantic tourists might be tempted to purchase as _souvenirs
de Venise_.
Two gentlemen are standing laughing and criticising one of these
pictures, and it is to these gentlemen that the Countess directs her
grand-daughter's attention. One of them is standing with his back
turned to the ladies, but his faultlessly-fitting English overcoat, his
gray gaiters, his way of balancing himself with legs slightly apart,
the distinction and gray-haired worthlessness that characterize him,
leave Erika in no doubt as to his identity. It is Count Hans
Treurenberg, an old Austrian friend of her grandmother's. The other,
whose profile is turned towards the ladies, is a man of middle height,
delicately built, well dressed, although his clothes have not the
English _cachet_ that distinguishes Count Treurenberg's, and with a
frank, attractive bearing and a clear-cut dark face. Taken all in all,
he might be supposed to be a man of the world,--some young relative of
the Count's,--were it not for his eyes, strange, gleaming eyes,
which after a brief glance at the grandmother are riveted upon the
grand-daughter. No mere man of the world ever had such eyes. Meanwhile,
Count Treurenberg has turned round.
"Ladies, I kiss your hands!" he exclaims. "You too have employed this
fine weather in an excursion: you could not do better."
The old Countess was about to reply, when Treurenberg's companion
whispered a few words to him.
"Permit me to present Herr von Lozoncyi," said the Count,--whereupon
the old Countess, before Lozoncyi had quite finished his formal
obeisance, called out, "I am delighted to know you. I belong among your
oldest admirers. Do not misunderstand me: I do not, of course, refer to
my own age, but to that of my admiration."
"I am immensely flattered, Frau Countess," Lozoncyi replied, in the
gentle, agreeable voice of a Viennese of mixed descent and doubtful
nationality. "Might I ask when first I had the good fortune to arouse
your interest?"
"How long ago is it, Erika?--five or six years?" asked the old lady.
"You will know."
"Six years ago, I think, grandmother."
"Six years ago, then," the Countess went on. "It was in Berlin, where
you were exhibiting two pictures, one before a curtain, the other
behind a curtain. I saw both; and I have believed in your talent ever
since,--which has not, however, prevented me from being surprised by
your last picture in the Circolo artistico."
"You are very kind."
"One thing I should like to know: do you fancy there are trees in full
leaf in hell?"
"What?--in hell?" asked the artist, lifting his eyebrows. "So far as I
can tell, I have never pictured hell to myself; although I have more
than once felt as if I had been there."
"Why, then, did you paint Francesca da Rimini after that fashion?"
"Francesca da Rimini?" Again he looked at her in surprise.
"The picture in the Circolo," the old lady persisted. "But"--and her
tone was much cooler--"perhaps I am mistaken, and the picture is not
yours?"
"No, no," he replied, laughing. "The picture to which you refer is
certainly mine, Countess, but my picture-dealer invented the title for
it. I never for a moment intended to paint that most attractive of all
sinning women."
"What did your picture mean, then?"
"To tell you the truth, I do not know." He said it with an odd smile in
which there was some annoyance. "I want to paint a series of pictures
under the title of 'Mes Cauchemars,'--' Evil Dreams,'--and the thing in
the Circolo was to be number one. If I could have dared to challenge
comparison with Botticelli,--which I could not,--I should perhaps have
called the picture 'Spring.'"
As he spoke, his eyes had continually strayed towards Erika: at last
they rested upon her with so uncivilized a stare that she turned away,
annoyed, and Count Treurenberg held up his hand as a screen, saying,
with a laugh, "Spare your eyes, my dear Lozoncyi: what sort of way is
that to gaze upon the sun?"
"You are right, Count," the painter said, rather bluntly; then, turning
again to the young girl, he said, in a very different tone, "I am not
recalling our meeting in the Calle San Giacomo. If I do not mistake,--I
can hardly believe it, but if I do not,--our acquaintance dates from
much farther back. Have you a step-father called Strachinsky?"
"Unfortunately, yes," her grandmother replied, dolefully.
"Well, then," he said, eagerly, "I----" He made a sudden pause. "How
foolish I am! You must long ago have forgotten what I am remembering."
"No, I have forgotten nothing," Erika replied, lifting her eyes to his
with a strange expression of mingled pride and reproach. "I recognized
you long ago; but it was not for me to tell you so."
"Countess! Allow me to kiss your hand, in memory of the dear little
fairy who brought me good fortune."
"What's all this?" Count Treurenberg asked, inquisitively, and the old
Countess as curiously inquired, "Where did you make each other's
acquaintance?"
Erika hesitates: a sudden shyness makes her uncertain how to begin the
story. Lozoncyi comes to her aid. His narrative is a little masterpiece
of pathos and humour. He tells everything; how the Baron--he describes
him perfectly in a single phrase--sent him off with an alms,--two
kreutzers,--his own indignation, his despair, his hunger, the sudden
appearance of the little girl; he describes her sweet little face, her
faded gown, her long thin legs in their red stockings, and the basket
of food decorated with asters; he describes the landscape, the little
brook creeping shyly beneath the huge bridge,--a bridge about as
suitable, he declares, as the tomb of Cecilia Metella would be as a
monument for a dead dog; he repeats the little fairy's every word, and
tells how, finally, she slipped the five guilders into his pocket,
assuring him that she knew how terrible it was to be without money.
The old lady and Treurenberg laugh; Erika listens eagerly and with
emotion. The story lacks something. Yes, in spite of its minute
details, something is missing. Is he keeping it for the conclusion, or
does he think it necessary to suppress this detail altogether? Erika is
indignant at such discretion. When he has finished, she says, calmly,
"You have forgotten one trifling incident, Herr Lozoncyi: you set a
price upon your picture of me----" She pauses, and then, coolly
surveying her listeners, she goes on, "I had to promise Herr Lozoncyi
to give him a kiss for my portrait."
"And may I ask if you kept your word, Countess?" asks Count
Treurenberg, laughing.
"Yes," Erika replies, curtly.
"Charming!" exclaims Count Treurenberg. "And, between ourselves, I
would not have believed it of you, Countess! You were a lucky fellow,
Lozoncyi."
Erika is visibly embarrassed, but Lozoncyi steps a little nearer to
her, and says, with a very kindly smile, "What a gloomy face! Ah,
Countess, can you regret the alms bestowed upon a poor lad by an infant
nine years old? If you only knew how often the memory of your childish
kindness has strengthened and encouraged me, you would not grudge it."
The matter could not have been adjusted with more amiable tact, and
Erika begins to laugh, and confesses that she has been foolish,--a fact
which her grandmother confirms gaily. The old lady is delighted with
the little story: the part played therein by Strachinsky gives it an
additional relish. She is charmed with Lozoncyi.
They leave the damp, musty library, and go out into the cloisters that
encircle the garden of the monastery. The scent of roses is in the air,
and from the monastery kitchen comes the odour of freshly-roasted
coffee. Count Treurenberg is glad of the opportunity to cover his bald
head with his English gray felt hat, and as he does so anathematizes
the Western idea of courtesy which makes it necessary for a gentleman
to catch cold in his head so frequently. He walks in front with the old
Countess, and Erika and Lozoncyi follow. The two old people talk
incessantly; the younger couple scarcely speak.
Lozoncyi is the first to break the silence. "Strange, that chance
should have brought us together again," he says.
She clears her throat and seems about to speak, but is mute.
"You were saying, Countess----?" he asks, smiling.
"I said nothing."
"You were thinking, then----?"
"Yes, I was thinking, in fact, that it is strange that you should have
left it to chance to bring about our meeting." The words are amiable
enough, but they sound cold and constrained as Erika utters them.
"Do you imagine that I have made no attempt to find you again,
Countess?"
"I imagine that if you had seriously desired to find me it would not
have been difficult."
He does not speak for a moment, and then he begins afresh: "You are
right,--and you do me injustice. When I learned that my dear little
poorly-clad princess had become a great lady, I did, it is true, make
no attempt to approach her; but before then---- Do you care to hear of
my unfortunate pilgrimage?"
"Most assuredly I do."
"Well, eight years after our childish interview I had my first couple
of hundred marks in my pocket. I bought a new suit of clothes--yes,
smile if yon choose,--a new suit, which I admired exceedingly--and
journeyed to Bohemia. I found the village, the brook, and the
bridge, and likewise the castle; but all had gone who had once lived
there,--even the amiable Herr von Strachinsky,--and no one knew
anything of my little princess. I was very sad,--too sad for a fellow
of three-and-twenty."
He pauses.
"And was that the end of your efforts?" asks the old Countess, whose
sharp ears have lost nothing of the story, and who now turns to the
pair with a laugh. "You showed no amount of persistence to boast of."
"When, overtaken by the rain, I took refuge in the parsonage of the
nearest village," he continues, "I made inquiries there for my little
friend. The priest gave me more information than I had been able to
procure elsewhere. He told me that one fine day some one had come from
Berlin to carry little Rika away,--that she was now a very grand
lady----"
"And then----?" the old lady persists.
"I sought no further: the bridge between my sphere in life and that of
my princess was destroyed. I quietly returned to Munich. I was very
unhappy: the goal to which I had looked forward seemed to have been
suddenly snatched from me."
"Oho!" exclaims the old Countess, "you can be sentimental too, then?
You are truly many-sided."
"That was years ago. I have changed very much since then."
After which Count Treurenberg contrives to interest the old lady in the
latest piece of Venetian gossip.
"You understand now why I did not appear before you, Countess Erika?"
But Erika shook her head: "I do not understand at all. I think you were
excessively foolish to avoid me for such a reason."
"Erika is quite right," the grandmother called back over her shoulder
in the midst of one of Count Treurenberg's most interesting anecdotes.
"Your failing to seek us out only proves that you must have thought us
a couple of geese; otherwise you would have been quite sure of a
friendly reception."
"No, it proves only that I had been hardly treated by fate, that I was
a well-whipped young dog," said Lozoncyi. "Now I have no doubt that I
should have been graciously received by both of you; but it would not
have amounted to much. You would soon have tired of me. A very young
artist is sadly out of place in a drawing-room; I was like all the rest
of the race."
"That I find hard to believe," the old Countess said, kindly, still
over her shoulder; then, turning again to Count Treurenberg, "Go on,
Count. You were saying----"
"I shall say nothing more," Treurenberg exclaimed, provoked. "I have
had enough of this: at the most interesting part of my story you turn
and listen to what Lozoncyi is saying to your grand-daughter. The fact
is that when Lozoncyi is present no one else can claim a lady's
attention." The words were spoken half in jest, half in irritation.
"Count Treurenberg is skilled in rendering me obnoxious in society,"
Lozoncyi murmurs.
"Oh, I never pay any attention to him," the old Countess assures him.
"I should like to know what you did after you learned that Erika
had----"
"Had become a grand lady?" Lozoncyi interrupts her. "Oh, I packed up my
belongings and went to Rome."
"And then?"
"There I had an attack of Roman fever," he says, slowly, and his face
grows dark. He looks around for Erika, but she is no longer at his
side: she has lingered behind, and has fallen into conversation with a
tall, dignified monk. She now calls out to the rest, "Has no one any
desire to see the tree beneath which Lord Byron used to write poems?"
They all follow her as the monk leads the way to the very shore of the
island and there with pride points to a table beneath a tree, where he
assures them Lord Byron used often to sit and write.
His hospitality culminates at last in regaling his guests with fragrant
black coffee, after which he leaves them.
They sit and sip their coffee under the famous tree. Lozoncyi expresses
a modest doubt as to the identity of the table. Count Treurenberg
relates an anecdote, at which Erika frowns, and gazes up into the blue
sky showing here and there among the branches of the old tree.
Suddenly an affected voice is heard to say, "_Enfin le voila_."
They look up, and see two ladies: one is no other than Frau von
Geroldstein, very affected, and looking about, as usual, for fine
acquaintances; the other is very much dressed, rouged, and very pretty.
Frau von Geroldstein is enthusiastically glad to see her Berlin
friends, and presents her companion,--the Princess Gregoriewitsch.
The old Countess, however, is not very amiably disposed towards the
new-comers. "Do not let us keep you from your friends," she says to the
artist: "it is late, and we must go. Adieu. I should be glad if you
could find time to come and see us."
Count Treurenberg conducts the grandmother and grand-daughter to their
gondola. Lozoncyi remains with his two admirers.
"Who was that queer Princess?" Countess Anna asks of Count Treurenberg,
in a rather depreciative tone, just before they reach their gondola.
"Oh, one of Lozoncyi's thousand adorers. She has a huge palace and
entertains a great deal. A pretty woman, but terribly stupid. Lozoncyi
is tied to a different apron-string every day."
The _table-d'hote_ is long past: the Lenzdorffs are dining in a small
island of light at one end of the large dining-hall.
They are unusually late to-night. After their return from the Armenian
monastery both ladies have dressed for the evening, before coming to
table. At the old Countess's entreaty, Erika has consented to go into
society this evening,--that is, to the Countess Muehlberg, who has been
legally separated from her husband for some time and is living very
quietly at Venice, where she receives a few friends every Wednesday.
The old Countess is unusually gay; Erika scarcely speaks.
The glass door leading from the dining-hall into the garden has been
left open for their special benefit. The warm air brings in an odour of
fresh earth, mossy stones, and the faintly impure breath of the
lagoons, which haunts all the poetic beauty of Venice like an unclean
spirit. The soft plash of the water against the walls of the old
palaces, the creaking of the gondolas tied to their posts, a monotonous
stroke of oars, the distant echo of a street song, are the mingled
sounds that fall upon the ear.
When the meal is ended the old Countess calls for pen and ink, and
writes a note at the table where they have just dined. Erika walks out
into the garden. With head bare and a light wrap about her shoulders,
she strolls along the gravel path, past the monthly roses that have
scarcely ceased to bloom throughout the winter, past the taller
rose-trees in which the life of spring is stirring. From time to time
she turns her head to catch the distant melody more clearly, but it
comes no nearer. Above her arches the sky, no longer pale as it had
been to-day amid the boughs of the historic tree, but dark blue, and
twinkling with countless stars.
She has walked several times up and down the garden as far as the
breast-work that separates it from the Grand Canal. Now as she nears
the dining-room she hears voices: her grandmother is no longer alone;
beside the table at which she is writing stands Count Treurenberg. He
is speaking: "'Tis a pity! he really is a very clever fellow with men,
but the women spoil him. Just now he is the plaything of all the women
who think themselves art-critics in Venice."
Erika pauses to listen. "Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me," her
grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: "He is the
very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just
enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible
to the other sex."
"You are complimentary, Count!" Erika calls into the dining-hall.
He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back
from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and
arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking
full at the speaker.
Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs
up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, "Pray remember
that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with
regard to the weaker sex have no reference to you. When I talk of your
sex in general I never think of you: you are an exception."
"We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?" her
grandmother says, laughing.
"But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?" asks
Treurenberg, changing the subject. "It is the first time that I have
had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress."
"Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me," the old Countess
explains. "I told her that, thanks to her passion for retirement, it
would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or
suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her
desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Muehlberg."
"I should have gone to Constance Muehlberg at all events, only I should
not have chosen her reception-day for my visit," Erika declares, taking
a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table,
and resting her chin on her clasped hands.
Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes
off her. "When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are,
Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it," he declares.
She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, "Shall we see you at
Countess Muehlberg's, Count?"
"Not to-night. I must go to-night to the Rambouillet of Venice."
"Oh! to the Neerwinden?"
"Yes. Why do you ladies never go there?"
"To speak frankly, I had no idea that one ought to go," the Countess
says, laughing.
"Why not? Because of the Countess's reputation? Let me assure you that
all ruins are the fashion in Venice. You are quite wrong to stay away
from the Salon Neerwinden: it is an historical curiosity, and, to me,
more interesting than the Doge's palace."
"But even if I should go to the Neerwinden I could not take this child
with me!"
"Why not? The Salon Neerwinden is by no means such a pest-house of
infectious moral disease as you seem to think. And then nothing could
harm the Countess Erika: her life is a charmed one."
At this moment a thick-set, gray-bearded individual enters the
dining-hall, very affected, and very anxious to induce his eye-glass
to fit into the hollow of his right eye. He is a Viennese banker,
Schmidt--he spells it Schmytt--von Werdenthal. Bowing with ease to the
ladies, he approaches Treurenberg. "Do I intrude, Hans?" he asks.
"You always intrude."
The banker smiles at the jest: awkward as he may be, he displays a
certain agility in ignoring a rude remark. "You know, Hans, we must go
first to the Gregoriewitsch; and we shall be late."
"Confound the fellow!" murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to
follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of
farewell. "Countess Erika," he says, with a final glance of admiration,
"if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been
of no use," he adds, turning to the grandmother; "but there's no
knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the
conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in
view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the
Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as
at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his
glory----"
"But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting," Schmytt interposes.
"I am coming." And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks
after him with a smile.
"I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner,"
she says. "He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--_fin de
siecle_, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to
his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you
impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now:
what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I
really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?"
"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his
glory?" asks Erika.