The new year had come, but it brought little that was new.
One day, about the middle of January, when a light snow was falling in large flakes, the carriage of the old countess had been standing for more than an hour before the hotel in which Irene was stopping with her uncle. The coachman, buried in his high-shouldered bearskin coat, had fallen into a doze, and the horses hung their heads and meekly suffered themselves to be covered with the falling snow. But it seemed as though the silent fall of the flakes would come to an end sooner than the storm of German and French phrases with which the lively old lady overwhelmed the young Fräulein, who sat absently listening to her.
Her uncle had retired into a window-niche, and was looking over an illustrated hunting-book; now and then he threw in a word, a question about this or that acquaintance, which immediately gave the old countess an opportunity to begin a new chapter of her town-gossip.
When, in the midst of this, the servant announced the arrival of the lieutenant, Irene could not suppress a glad "Ah!" This time she found his riding-boots, stiff with snow, and his shabby old winter overcoat, in which he was muffled up to the eyes, by no means so objectionable as usual, but welcomed him as a friend in need, and, smiling gratefully, gave him her hand, which he pressed tightly between his rough buckskin gloves.
But for all that she was disappointed in her hope, for he silently threw himself into a chair, stretched out his legs and beat time with his riding-whip on his high boots, while the old lady, taking up the lost thread of her discourse again, began to spin on as zealously as ever.
Her conversation dealt for the most part with the festival calendar of the great world, with receptions, soirées, routs, and the amateur theatricals that had been given by the French ambassador. Then the question whether there was a prospect of any court balls, and how many there would be, was discussed at length, with great vigor, and with many references to former times, when the good lady was a reigning belle.
All at once it seemed to occur to her that she had the conversation entirely to herself.
"Mais savez-vous, mon cher Schnetz," she said, turning to him, "que vous avez une mine à faire peur? Je ne parle pas de votre toilette--in that respect you have never been very indulgent toward us. But all the time I am trying to initiate our dear Irene into the programme of her winter pleasures--for we can never think of letting her travel off into that land of cholera and brigands, where they are threatening to cut the throat of our religion and of the holy Father--you sit there like Hippocrates--le dieu du silence; et on voit bien, que vous vous moquez intérieurement de tous ces plaisirs innocents. Of course, in regard to dancing, the gentlemen now-a-days are quite blasé. But although you yourself can no longer take any pleasure in the joys of the carnival--"
"You are greatly mistaken, my dear countess," interrupted Schnetz, seriously. "I am so far from being indifferent to the pleasures of dancing that I actually propose to dance all night long, four days from to-day, provided I can find a partner who will dare to trust herself with such a dancing bear."
"Four days from to-day? Vous plaisantez, mon ami. Where is there going to be a ball four days from to-day?"