"We really must invite her," says, in a mournful tone, Countess Mimi Dey, a large stately woman, with a too high forehead, a feature which has the proud advantage of being a family inheritance in the Sempaly family, an aristocratic, small, turn-up nose, a benevolent smile, and a near-sighted glance.
The Countess is the best woman in the world, of proverbial good nature and unfeigned condescension in association with music-teachers, governesses, companions, maids, tutors and officials, and such poor devils who are paid and supported by the aristocracy, and politely courtesy to them; but she is unapproachably stiff to the upper middle classes, those persons who demand a place in society.
She belongs to that exclusive coterie which considers itself the sole patented extract of humanity, and looks upon all the rest of the world as only a common herd, a mob which, under certain circumstances, permits itself to pay its servants better, and to give more to charitable aims than princely houses, a mob which speaks French, wears Swedish gloves, and lives in palaces. She has a vague idea that it speaks incorrect French, that under the gloves coarse hands are concealed, that the palaces are always furnished with the taste of first-class waiting-rooms, but knows nothing definite about it, does not know "these people" at all, does not see them, although they are everywhere--they do not exist for her.
They tell an amusing anecdote of her: that once at the opera on a Patti evening, her cousin Pistasch Kamenz entered her box, and asked her, "Is any one in the theatre to-night?" She, after she had glanced around the crowded building, answered mournfully, "Not a soul!"
What particularly amuses the Countess is that, as she hears, this great class of bourgeoise, "which one does not know," is, on its side, divided by various differences in education and condition into classes which do not "know" each other.
"I really must invite her," she repeats, mournfully.
She leans back in a deep arm-chair in a large drawing-room with brown wainscoting and numerous family portraits, and smokes a cigarette.
"Pardon me that I really cannot so deeply pity you as you seem to expect," replies Scirocco Sempaly, who, now on leave, occupies a second armchair opposite his sister.
"Hm! I do not care about the positive fact; last week I dined with my bailiff's wife, but--it is a matter of principle."
"Cent a'as," says, with indifferent gravity, an old acquaintance of ours, Eugene von Rhoeden, who sits by an open window before a mediæval inlaid table and plays bézique with the above-mentioned cousin of the hostess, Count Pistasch Kamenz.