"What! le Paysan du Danube?" giggled Madame de Gandry, who had only partly understood the conversation.
"Sterzl is a man of the highest respectability," said the countess icily; she did not intend to allow that little French woman to laugh at her fellow-countryman, though he was not a man of birth.
"Le Paysan du Danube is my particular friend," said the princess with the simple heartiness that was so peculiarly her own. "I am very fond of him; he is quite one of ourselves."
"He can have no higher reward on earth," said her brother with good-humored irony.
"When my small boy fell and broke his arm, here in this very room, Sterzl picked him up, and you should have seen how gently he held my poor darling," added the princess.
"That is ample evidence in favor of the fact that his woman-kind are presentable," laughed Sempaly.
"But allow me to ask," interposed the Madame de Gandry, "just that I may understand what I am about--these Sterzls, they are not in good society in Austria?"
"Our Austrian etiquette can afford no standpoint for foreign society," said Truyn with unusual sharpness, for he could not endure Madame de Gandry; "we receive no one who is not by birth one of ourselves."
"Yes," said Sempaly with a keen glance, "Austrian society is as exclusive as the House of Israel, and scorns proselytes." And the leather-seller's daughter, who had not understood--or not chosen to understand Truyn's speech, replied with much presence of mind: "Ah, I am glad to know what I am about."
Siegburg, who was sitting behind her, glanced at Sempaly and made an expressive grimace.