“Pretty nearly everything possible,” she replied, laughing. “I take at least five hours of lessons daily. One of my professors only just left the house: he is giving me a course of University lessons on the ancient literature of India. Since a week, too, I have been learning to read hieroglyphics.... Haven’t you made a study of them?... They are very interesting.... One is carried away—other lands, other times.... And I am so curious about everything in the world.... But I am best in languages. It is so extremely important to be able to read every writer in the original.”
“For you must know,” put in Mme. Wildenhoff, “that Mme. Mary is a well-known linguist.”
“Indeed?”
“Ah,” she said, smiling modestly, “it all comes to me so easily. At the present time, I am proficient in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian. This year I am learning the Finnish and Japanese languages. I have, moreover, read Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin. Not one hundredth part of their marvellous beauties can be rendered in a translation: and I am so sensitive to the Beautiful...!”
“Do you know?” she broke off, turning towards Mme. Wildenhoff, “I have at last managed to satisfy my husband that we must positively take a trip to Algeria. And that will have to be in a few weeks: it is too hot there in summer.... Ah! you can’t think how hard it is to get him away from those flowers of his; he loves them so dearly!”
I examined Mme. Wieloleska with careful scrutiny. Her face is pale and surrounded with scanty locks of fair hair; her eyes, small, greyish and expressionless, and bordered with a faint pink hue, are continually in motion to and fro; she has a tiny nose with rounded nostrils, and a full, rather bloodless mouth, now and then moving with a quick twitch, like a child making a wry face; and with all that she is attractive. Her talkativeness, her tuneless voice, and a certain carelessness in her manner, correct one’s first impression that she is pretentious, and give the effect of a schoolgirl désinvolture, rather than the effrontery of a bona-roba.
She stooped to caress her pet lamb, which had lain down at her feet in a posture that suggested careful training. Then she rose, saying: “Perhaps we may now go and look at the place.”
On our way to the conservatory, we had to pass through several rooms and galleries full of pictures. On the right, we saw a workroom, with bright jets of gas burning, though the night had not yet fallen. Several girls were there, busily bending over tambour frames.
“These are my little ones,” said Mme. Wieloleska, smiling at them. “Unfortunately, I have no children myself, so I have undertaken to bring up these girls.”
“What are they about here?”