"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."