‘The Vienna public,’ remarked Ompteda, ‘would indeed be surprised if it knew the cause of the quarrel. The wife of one of these gentlemen has an unfortunate mania for scents, or rather for one scent of which she claims to be the inventor. It’s a mixture of rose-water and musk, sufficiently strong to set all the Italian women troubled with vapours running. Inasmuch as the lady, who is still very good-looking, though by no means in the first flush of youth, goes out a great deal, that undesirable perfume is so well known that she couldn’t enter a room without her presence being betrayed by it. It so happened that one fine morning her husband, the Prince ---- walks into the rooms of his friend the Comte ----. In less than a second his nostrils are assailed by a scent which he knows but too well, and he exclaims, “My wife has been here.” “Your wife,” replies the comte. “Not at all.” “You deny it! Well, then, she is still here, and if I begin to look for her, the scent will do the rest for me very shortly.” In consequence of this violent explanation, in which the one denies and the other affirms, the two friends draw their swords in the room itself, and while each wounds the other, the lady escapes by a back staircase. The mishap ought to have cured her. She continues, nevertheless, to drench herself with that damnable perfume, which might well be called the Tell-tale Scent.’ ‘People are very sorry about the accident which cost the young Duc Louis d’Aremberg his life. You know that he was thrown from his horse on the flagstones of the Josef Platz, and when they lifted him up he was dead. It appears that birth is no guarantee against the thunders of the gods. The father of the young duke lost his life out hunting. His mother was guillotined in France. His brother was exiled in consequence of a duel in which he killed his adversary; his sister perished in the historic ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in Paris. Was it worth while to call oneself d’Aremberg to be a prey to all these misfortunes?’ ‘You were not at the last ball of Gey-Müller, the banker?’ ‘No, but I was at the similar fête at Arnstein’s, and it was really a curious sight to me to see the financial world rivalling the Austrian Court in display, and perhaps surpassing it.’