There the Countess Lenzdorff was right,--Erika was remarkable,--but she was wrong in parading the child before her acquaintances: first because it bored her acquaintances,--when are we ever entertained by listening to the praises of somebody whom we hardly know?--and again because her exaggerated laudation of her grandchild excited the antagonism of her listeners. On this first reception-day she laid the foundation of the unpopularity from which Erika was to suffer long afterwards.
The afternoon was nearing its close; the lamps were lit; three or four ladies only, all in black,--the court was in mourning at the time,--were still sitting in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room. Close by the hearth sat a tiny old lady, Frau von Norbin, née Princess Nimbsch, with a delicately chiselled face framed in silver-gray curls, a face the colour of a faded rose-leaf, and with a thin clear voice that sounded like an antique musical clock and seemed to come from far away. She was about ten years older than Countess Anna, but had been one of her most intimate friends from childhood, belonging also to an old Courland family, which had given the Vienna Congress a good deal of trouble. She had known Talleyrand in her youth, and had corresponded with Chateaubriand. Countess Lenzdorff had a water-colour sketch of her as a young girl with a wreath of vine-leaves on her head, her hair hanging about her shoulders in Bacchante fashion, and with very bare arms holding aloft a tambourine. The rococo sentiment of the faded sketch contrasted strangely with the old lady's dignified decrepitude and poetically softened charm.
Opposite her, and evidently very desirous to stand well with her, sat a certain Frau von Geroldstein, wife of a wealthy merchant who had purchased a patent of nobility in one of the petty German states, without, as he learned too late, acquiring any court privileges for his wife. Indignant at the pettiness of the German sovereign in duodecimo, he had established himself in Berlin, where his wife hoped to find a suitable stage for her social efforts. She had been there three years without finding any aristocratic coigne of vantage for her pretensions; in despair she had fallen back upon celebrities, artists, professors, politicians (even democrats), to lend a certain splendour to her salon. After at last finding her aristocratic vantage-ground at a watering-place in the shape of a General's widow, with debts, and a daughter of forty whom she alleged to be twenty-four, she annoyed her old acquaintances extremely. It was the business of her life to extort forgiveness from society for having once invited Eugene Richter to her house. Society never forgives, but it sometimes forgets if it be convenient to do so. It began to find it convenient to forget all sorts of things about Frau von Geroldstein, not only her political acquaintances, but also that her husband had made his fortune by furnishing army-supplies of doubtful quality.
Frau von Geroldstein was so available, and was besides so ready to make any concessions required of her. She threw Eugene Richter overboard, and developed a touching enthusiasm for the court chaplain Dryander. She bombarded society with invitations to dinners which were excellent, and at which one was sure to meet no undesirable individuals. She paid endless visits, and possessed in fullest measure the article most indispensable to the career of social aspirants,--a very thick skin.
She was about twenty-five years old, and was gifted by nature with a very small waist, which she pinched in to the stifling-point, and with a face which would have been pretty had it not given the impression, as did everything else about her, of artificiality. Of course her court mourning was trimmed with three times as much crape as that of any other lady present; and today she had made it her special business to win the favour of little Frau von Norbin. She had offered her three things already,--her riding-horse for Frau von Norbin's daughter, her lawn-tennis ground (she had a wonderful garden behind her house, which no one used), and her opera-box; but Frau von Norbin's manner was still coldly reserved. At last Frau von Geroldstein discovered from a remark of Countess Lenzdorff's that the old lady's principal interest lay in a children's hospital of which she was the chief patroness. Frau von Geroldstein instantly declared that the improvement of the health of the children of the poor was positively all that she cared for in life: when might she visit the hospital? Countess Lenzdorff smiled somewhat maliciously when Frau von Norbin, caught at last by this benevolent birdlime, plunged into a conversation with Frau von Geroldstein upon the most practical mode of nursing children.
Meanwhile, Countess Lenzdorff turned for amusement to a young maid of honour, a charming person, whose delicate sense of humour had been uninjured by the debilitating atmosphere of the court, and who was now detailing the latest misfortunes of a certain Countess Ida von Brock.
This Countess Brock was a notorious figure in Berlin society. She was usually called the twelfth fairy, since she was frequently omitted in the invitations to some social 'high mass' (the word was of Countess Lenzdorff's invention) and was then sure to appear uninvited and to do all kinds of mischief by her malicious gossip. Every winter she looked out for fresh lions for her menagerie, as her salon was called in familiar conversation,--for artists sufficiently well bred to consort with men of fashion, and for men of fashion sufficiently intelligent to appreciate artists. Since, thanks to her numberless eccentricities and indiscretions, she had quarrelled with all sorts of people, she was always obliged to entreat a few influential friends to procure for her her anthropological curiosities. Some time ago she had applied to Countess Lenzdorff to provide her with 'twelve witty Counts,'--an order which Countess Lenzdorff had declined to fill, upon the plea that the supply was just then exhausted.
During the previous winter the glory of her salon had been a hypnotizer, a young American for whom the Countess Ida had been wildly enthusiastic.
Mr. Van Tromp was his name; he had a dome-like forehead, and he cost nothing; he was quite ready to sacrifice his time without pay for the pleasure of mingling in good society,--a pleasure more highly prized by an American, as is well known, than by any European aspirant. At the close of the season the Countess's footman had unfortunately put aqua-fortis in the chambermaid's tea, and, as the Countess ascribed the crime to the influence of Van Tromp, she straightway relinquished her hypnotic pastime, the more willingly as most of her other guests considered it a rather dangerous game.
Van Tromp was informed of this when he next visited the Countess. He acquiesced in her decision, and amiably and unselfishly hoped that without any further exercise of his peculiar talent she would allow him to visit her 'as a friend.' Countess Brock, however, wrote him a note thanking him for his great kindness, but at the same time insisting that she could not possibly allow him to waste his time at her house; the people frequenting it were in fact quite too insignificant to associate with so great a man as himself.