I.

"My dear Falk, do not tear past me so unheedingly, I beg you! Do you,

then, not recognize me?"

Thus a stout old lady cries in a deep rough voice to a gentleman whose

arm she has energetically grasped with both hands.

The gentleman--his carriage betokens a retired officer; his wrinkles

betray him to be a contemporary of the lady--starts back.

"Oh! it is you, Baroness!" cries he, and half recalls that forty years

or so ago he was an admirer of hers, and remembers very distinctly that

last winter he had quarrelled with her at whist on account of a revoke.

"I am indescribably pleased," he adds, with well-bred resignation, and

at the same time glances after a passing blonde chignon whose

coquettish curls float to and fro as if they said "catch me!"

"Ah, ah! age does not protect you from folly!" laughs the old woman.

"She interests you, the person with the yellow hair, eh? Dyed, my dear

man, dyed, I assure you. It is not worth the trouble to run after her.

Her back is pretty, _mais pour le reste!_ Hm! Sit down and talk to me

for a little!"

The yellow chignon has vanished round a corner and the energetic old

woman has drawn her ex-adorer down on a bench in the meagre shade of a

watering-place promenade, upon a grass-green bench under gray-brown

trees.

It is in Franzensbad in July; afternoon; around them the sleepy

stillness of a place where there is nothing to do and one cannot amuse

one's self.

Some ladies, pale, sickly, dressed with the grotesque elegance which is

permissible in a watering-place, pass, some with arms bare to the

elbow, others with pearls round their necks, still others with floating

hair.

"How glad I am, my dear Colonel!" cries the old Baroness to her

captive, for at least the tenth time. "But how are you, pray tell me?

No! Where do you get your elixir of life? You remain so fabulously

young!"

In fact the Colonel, closely shaven and dressed in the latest fashion,

slender and active as he is, at a hundred paces looks like a young

dandy; at twenty paces, at least like the mummy of one. Still he

parries the old lady's compliments, while he shakes his head and shrugs

his shoulders disparagingly.

"Positively--positively!" croaks the old woman. "And now tell me what

is the news with you people in Marienbad? It is not in vain that they

call you 'Le Figaro de Marienbad.'"

Marienbad, a few hours distant from Franzensbad, is the present

stopping place of the Colonel.

"News? News?" grumbles the Colonel. "A mill burned down yesterday,

three head of cattle and two men with it."

"Oh, cease such ordinary, horrible stories. What does society?"

"Rejoices that it has opportunity of diversion through a fair for

charity."

"So? Ah!--and what else?"

"Last night Princess Barenburg's groom hung himself. Perhaps that

interests you?"

"Ah, very agreeable that! Poor Clemence is unfortunate!" says the

Baroness, compassionately.

"Yes, the Pancini also!" remarks the Colonel, and looks down

indifferently at the flower in his buttonhole.

"Why she?"

"What? you do not know!" cries the Colonel in astonishment. "Her last

admirer, the Polish prince with the unpronounceable name, has turned

out to be a circus rider."

"The handsome blond with the mysterious political past."

"It seems to have been merely a politic silence," jokes the Colonel.

"_Tiens, tiens!_--how delightful--how delightful! But do you know it

positively?" she asks with anxious excitement.

"Positively! Nicki Arenhain, two years ago in Madrid, saw him dressed

in a green satin jacket and white tights springing through hoops--she

identified him at once. Famous story, quite famous." The Colonel rubs

his hands with satisfaction--the old Baroness knocks enthusiastically

on the ground with her umbrella, like an animated amateur who applauds

her favorite virtuoso.

"Excellent!" croaks she. "It serves her right, that Pancini, who

permits herself to be as arrogant as a born lady. It serves her right,

the soap-boiler's daughter."

"Pardon! her father was a pawn-broker--or was in some banking

business--I really do not remember----"

"It is all the same--she will have to step down now. Bravo! Bravo!"

"I know something else, Baroness," says the Colonel proudly, and

smiling slyly. "A decided bit of news, _pour la bonne bouche_!"

"Well?"

"Felix Lanzberg is to be married."

The Baroness is speechless; she opens her mouth, stares at the Colonel,

clutches his arm, and only after several seconds she stammers softly:

"The--the--certain--Lanzberg?"

"Yes--it is considered certain."

"Whom?"

"Look around."

The Baroness looks around. In the back seat of a carriage just rolling

past them sit two ladies, one of whom, a woman in the fifties,

tastelessly dressed, loaded with cameos and Florentine mosaics, has the

piercing eyes, the excessive thinness as well as the aimless, twitching

movements of a very uneasy temperament, while her neighbor at the left,

beautiful and young, lazily crumpling her striking toilet, leans back

among the cushions, the embodiment of dissatisfied indolence. A student

with a bright red cap occupies the small seat opposite. On the box,

usurping the coachman's raised seat, is a short individual with a

crimson cravat between a blue shirt and purple face, a short, bright

yellow foulard coat and large Panama hat. He smacks his lips

incessantly at the horses, in driving holds his elbows far out from his

sides so that one could easily place a travelling bag under each arm,

and groans and puffs from exertion and attention. Near him, faultlessly

erect, arms solemnly crossed on his chest, sits a majestic coachman,

every feature expressing the despair of a distinguished servant who, in

a weak hour, had let himself be persuaded to enter the service of an

ordinary millionnaire.

"Who is this elegant gentleman?" asked the Baroness, raising her

lorgnon, still wholly absorbed in contemplating the interesting foulard

back.

"Felix Lanzberg's future father-in-law, Mr. Harfink."

"He?" sighs the Baroness, emphatically. "Poor Felix! He does not

deserve such punishment."

The Colonel shrugs his shoulders. "What punishment? He is not marrying

the father, and the daughter is charming--a refined beauty, a truly

aristocratic girl, and I do not believe that she will ever worry

Lanzberg by especial clinging to her parental house. Now I must part

from you, _nolens volens_, Baroness--regret it deeply--I have a letter

to deliver to the Countess Dey."

"I will go with you, I will go with you," cries the old lady,

animatedly. "Give me your arm and imagine it was forty years ago."

And he, in his quality of man of the world condemned to perpetual

politeness, gives her his arm and walks on laughing and chatting, at

the side of the colossally stout woman with the servile, nodding little

head--a martyr of _bon ton_.

The Colonel and his friend were both fond of gossip--with the

difference that the Colonel, an independent man, related scandal for

his own pleasure, while the Baroness very often did so to please

others. Her name was Baroness Klettenstein, but usually she was simply

called _Klette_ (burr) because she could never be shaken off. She also

had a second equally pretty nickname. In consequence of her

indestructible life at the cost of others--she was remarkably robust

for her sixty-six years--she had been christened the "immortal

Cantharide." Hungrily she crept from one house to another, gained

admission by a budget of malicious news, which, as we have seen, she

collected indefatigably, at times even invented. She always rendered

homage to the rising, never remembered even to have known the setting

sun. And when, weary of her tiring parasitism, she rested in her tiny

room at Prague, which was the only home she possessed, she swore that

she would have been just as unselfish, just as truth-loving and

discreet as others, if only her income had sufficed for her needs.

Out of breath and panting, she entered the park on the arm of the

Colonel. The bandmaster, a Pole with an interesting, revolutionist

face, swings the baton with graceful languor. The ladies, leaning back

in their white chairs on either side of the broad gravel walk, look

weary, limp, and melancholy in their gay gowns, like flowers which a

too hot sunbeam has withered and faded. They are worn, thin, and

colorless, but for their toilets; but the transparent paleness of their

faces, the excessive thinness of their forms lends them a certain

charm, something fairylike and distinguished, refinedly aristocratic

and Undine-like. Invalidism is less becoming to the men at the cure;

many of them resemble corpses which an enterprising physiologist has

exhumed to experiment upon.

The first row of tables are already occupied, but an attendant,

understanding the Klette's glance, brings forward another from the rear

and places it where she is told. Hereupon the Baroness calls for coffee

for two, and invites the Colonel in the most polite manner to sit

beside her, and as he cannot deny that from this spot, purposely chosen

by the Klette for a fine view of all present, he can soonest espy

Countess Dey whom he has sought in vain, he resolves to await her here.

Slowly the guests stroll along the promenade: most noticeable of all,

admired or at least stared at by all, Linda Harfink. Her large, dark

hat with its scarlet feather throws a mysterious shadow on her pale

face; a black lace scarf is twisted round her throat and tied in a

careless knot behind. Her pale green dress clings tightly, and yet in

folds around her figure. Near her walks a young man, blond and

handsome; in spite of his handsome figure and Nero-profile, too foppish

and dandified, too strikingly dressed in the latest fashion, to be

taken for any one but an elegant _parvenu_.

"Who is he?" asks Klette, her mouth full of bread, a coffee cup in her

hand.

"A young Baron Rh[oe]den, born Grau. The family was ennobled five years

ago, and since then only call themselves by the predicate," replies the

Colonel. "A cousin of Linda--very nice fellow--_garcon coiffeur_, but

very nice for his sphere--seems to be uncommonly smitten with his

cousin."

Through the evening air floats a sentimental potpourri from the "Flying

Dutchman." The Harfinks, who wish to return the same evening to

Marienbad, where they are staying, have left the park. Gazing down in

coquettish silence at a rose in her hand, Linda has vanished through

the gateway of the park, on the arm of her cousin, in the golden light

of the setting sun.

"Colonel!" now cries a gay voice.

"Ah, Countess!" Intently gazing after Linda's seductive apparition, the

Colonel had not noticed the approach of the so-long-awaited Countess

Dey. Now he springs up, "falls at her feet, kisses her hands,"

naturally only with words, and searches all his pockets for the letter

for her.

The Countess meanwhile, with lorgnon at her eyes, indifferently gazes

at her surroundings.

"I just met a little person who is considered a great beauty--Hopfing

or Harpfink is her name, I believe. They say that Lanzberg is engaged

to her--that cannot be true?"

"I have heard so too," says the Colonel. "Curious match--what do you

say to it, Countess?"

"Felix Lanzberg is as unfortunate as ever," murmurs the Countess.

But Klette shrugs her fat shoulders and hisses: "What does it matter if

a certain Lanzberg makes a mesalliance?"