There was a visitors' book here which Sir Charles was signing for us when suddenly there were shrieks of surprise and everybody rushed to the windows. Through a cleft of pine woods standing out against the bright blue sky was a glittering, dazzling mass. It was the Jungfrau, Baron Sonnenburg said, and was only seen on rare occasions, and nothing could be more fortunate than that it should unveil its peerless loveliness to-day of all days for the benefit of his guests.
An Al Fresco Repast
An al fresco repast was served on the old battlements which have been turned out into a terrasse. An awkward, blushing youth was brought up to me by Baron Sonnenburg and presented as his son, and I was told he was going to England in the autumn to learn English, of which he doesn't know a word. Two rather pretty, but shockingly badly-dressed girls, were talking to two Swiss officers, but the attitudes of all were so stilted and forced that I am sure they were not enjoying the unusual liberty permitted on this occasion.
The Duchesse de Vaudricourt whispered to me that they were Baroness Sonnenburg's daughters and were considered very English. I was on the point of asking her what she thought I was, but thought better of it, and merely said, that from the extreme diffidence they displayed, I should have taken them for French girls whose dot had not yet been settled.
The Wertzelmanns
The Wertzelmanns came late; they brought Madame Colorado, who looked perfectly angelic in a marvellous white crêpe de chine, and a hat that killed you at a glance. They brought the news of the accident to the Vicomte de Narjac's automobile, and Mrs. Wertzelmann excitedly told a circle, who had gathered to admire her clothes and her jewels, that it was the sensation of the season, she had never heard of anything so dreadful. And Baron Sonnenburg, who had never seen either Blanche or the Vicomte before, and had forgotten their names already, was told how the Vicomte's automobile had run away and exploded, terribly mangling the croupier at the Kursaal, blowing the Vicomte and Miss Blaine, such a sweet English girl, to smithereens, and that the poor Marquise de Pivart had gone mad from the shock.
An Amusing Story
Mrs. Wertzelmann dwelt on the horrible details with a tenacity there was no shaking, and at every exclamation of pity uttered by her audience she but made the story more graphic. The Vicomte and Blanche, who all the while had listened quietly, unobserved by Mrs. Wertzelmann, stuffed their mouths with handkerchiefs to keep from shrieking. But when the Vicomte heard that a boatman had found one of his arms clinging to a fragment of automobile in the lake, and that they were picking his brains off the walls of the Pension Thorvaldsen, he could contain himself no longer.
You should have seen Mrs. Wertzelmann's face when she saw Blanche and the Vicomte bursting with laughter, and she looked about the terrasse as if she expected to see the Marquise and the croupier eating ices in Baron Sonnenburg's beach chairs; and later when we left I am sure she wondered why we drove off in the landau with the fly-bitten horses instead of in the automobile.
"If Maria once begins to tell a story," said Mr. Wertzelmann to me, "there is no stopping her. I knew she would end by putting her foot into it."