“Rudolph Ehrenstein—a nephew of Madame von Hohenfels. He has just lost his mother, and is travelling in search of distraction. Some of these young ladies will doubtless take compassion on him.”
“Yes, with that pretty face and doleful forsaken air he will not have to go far for a willing consoler.”
“It would be the very best thing for him,” said the popular poet, joining them. “One never knows how much to believe of gossip, especially in this centre of canards, but they speak of him already as the Natzelhuber’s latest flame.”
“Good heavens! Not possible, surely!” cried the old lady, in a tremor of delighted horror. “He has the face of an angel.”
“Angels have been known to fall, Madame,” said the poet, with his best Parisian bow and cynical shrug, throwing a challenging glance at his neighbour as if to defy him to prove that Théophile Gautier or Dumas could have capped an observation more neatly; and then quoted with a beatific consciousness of his own smartness: “L’ange n’est complet que lorsqu’ il est déchu.”
“Talk of women’s tongues! You men have never a good word to say either of yourselves or of us.”
“Is there not a proverb to that effect as regards the ladies?”
“Calumny, my friend, pure calumny. Men have had the monopoly of proverbs, and, of course, they have used them as they have used everything else, against us. It does not follow that even the clever man believes all the smart and satirical things he says of our sex, but an arrow shot at us looks a smarter achievement than a juster arrow aimed at yourselves. And the smart thing goes down to a duller posterity, and there’s your proverb. Truth is as likely to be in it as in the bottom of the proverbial well!”
“I shall seek it henceforth in you, Madame. Can you tell me if there is any truth in the announcement that the Natzelhuber is coming to-night?”
“Madame von Hohenfels looks certainly anxious and doubtful. You know Mademoiselle Natzelhuber has an alarming reputation.”