When we returned to Austria the war was over. Austria had lost Milan—and our two mothers also had losses to record. All systems, methods, gifts of presentiment and of conjecture, had shown themselves fallacious, and it was solemnly vowed that henceforth and forever the green table was done with. The fee for the lesson had had to be paid, but at least they were now free from the delusion, and at heart glad to be free from it; for gaming is not only reprehensible, it is really also disagreeable, repulsive. Now, thank God, there was no longer any need of tormenting one’s self with the trying duty of utilizing the gift of second sight; for it had been proved once more, and this time definitively, that the faculty of presentiment failed to work at green tables.

The fee for the lesson had not been small. Economy was the word now. My mother gave up her residence in Vienna and rented a little country place near the city, in Klosterneuburg. Here two years were to be spent in the utmost seclusion and frugality. After this period I should be eighteen years old, and a sufficient sum would have been laid by to replace that “fee” and to come back to the world, into which I was then to be introduced. Meanwhile this lonely life in Klosterneuburg was not at all without charms. Aunt Lotti and Elvira were with us, and we two girls again diligently took up our studies and other occupations. Elvira wrote new dramas, corresponded, and industriously wrote letters to all kinds of famous people.[[14]] I did a good deal of piano-playing and studied languages. For our recreation there was more puff-playing too: Friedrich von Hadeln had nothing more to adeln now; once more the most varied figures were introduced as the heroes of our romances, from American cowboys to European attachés of legation and on again to Indian Maharajahs. Once every week came my dear guardian Fritzerl driving out from Vienna, played his game of tarteln with mother, and told all the happenings at court and in society. There was also an elderly clergyman from the Klosterneuburg convent who was often at our house—a bel esprit, philosopher, and jovial associate. We took long walks in the Danube meadows in Aunt Lotti’s company; my mother was not a good pedestrian and contented herself with taking the air in our little garden. It was quite a wild garden, with a brook running through it. I still remember happy hours spent in dreaming on the banks of that brook; the water dancing over pebbles, the growth of bushes all along the bank, among them a few willows with low-hanging branches, all afforded me a quite peculiar enjoyment that I have never found again in any landscape in the world.

The winter then, to be sure, was rather monotonous in our country nest. So once, for diversion’s sake, I played a prank in all quietness. Without telling anybody anything, I composed an advertisement and sent it to the Vienna Presse, where it appeared; it made a sensation in our circle.

“I’m going to write to those people!” cried Elvira.

The words of the advertisement were:

“From pure caprice on the one hand, and from the mind’s demand for an exchange of ideas on the other, a brother and sister of gentle birth, living in a lonely castle, desire to enter into correspondence with persons who feel warmly and think deeply. The correspondence will be supervised by a stern papa who means to show the young enthusiasts how unpractical they are with their idea of an exchange of souls. Address Cela n’engage à rien, office of this paper.”

“Yes, I’ll write to those people,” repeated Elvira.

“I forbid it,” said Aunt Lotti; “who would answer an advertisement?”

“Oh, let her, aunt,” I pleaded.

My mother fired up: “Perhaps you mean to write too? You’ll do no such thing!”