"Look, Heltzendorff! Is she not like that old crow, Von Kienitz?"
"Yes, her figure is very similar," I admitted.
"Ah! The old woman was introduced to me the other night at Bismarck-Bohlen's house. Himmel! What a freak! Have you seen her wig?"
I replied that I had visited once or twice at the Stulerstrasse, and that the company I had met there were certainly amusing. I mentioned some of their names, among them that of young Von Ratibor, Major Gersdorff, of the Death's Head Hussars, Von Heynitz, of the Königsjäger, a well-known man about town, his friend Winterfeld, together with a number of ladies of the very ultra go-ahead set. At this His Highness seemed highly interested.
"She certainly seems a very curious old person," he laughed. "Fancies that she's but twenty-five, and actually had the audacity to dance at Bismarck-Bohlen's. Somebody was cruel enough to ask her to sing a French chansonnette!"
"Did she?" I inquired.
"Of course. She put herself into a martial attitude, and sang something about 'Le drapeau' of 'Jacques Bonhomme,' as though we wished to know anything about it. The man who suggested the song was sorry."
I laughed heartily. Sometimes the Crown-Prince could be humorous, and it certainly must have been distinctly quaint when, as a result of the joke played upon the old Countess, she so completely turned the tables upon the party by singing a song full of French sentiment.
That circumstance told me that she must be a very clever old lady, even though she wore that tow-coloured wig which sometimes on nights of merriment got a trifle askew.
Judge my great surprise, however, when, about six weeks later, Frau von Alvensleben, the pretty Grande Maîtresse of the Court of the Crown-Princess, stopped me in one of the corridors of the Marmor Palace and, drawing me aside, whispered: