The director's wife was very nice to us. She often invited us to visit her although we did so but seldom. Her rooms were filled with relics of her former life--portraits of herself as lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Austria, in court dress, portraits of her Empress, old photographs of groups on terraces and at castle gates, almost every person in them a "personage." She herself still wore her hair as her Empress had done, in a coronet of narrow braids set round her head. She said that they were sewn together with the same coloured silk as the hair every morning after being braided, to make them stand up. With us she always played the _grande dame_, apparently quite without effort, but there were stories about her which seemed to show that she could be something very different. She certainly could talk most interestingly of her former grandeur. One of her tales was of a lady of the court who owned the smallest dog that any one had ever seen. It was so tiny that she used to carry it, when in evening dress, in the front of her décolletage. One night at dinner as she leaned forward to eat her soup, the dog fell into the plate. There was vermicelli in the soup, and before she could fish it out of this entanglement, the poor little thing was drowned! Another time the Frau Direktor showed us a photograph of a very slim and shapely young dragoon in full regalia, cloak and all, holding a letter up to hide his face. As there was evidently a story we begged her to tell it to us. She said that there had been a certain young married Countess of the court, who was known as a great prude and was always boasting of her exaggerated wifely devotion. Her airs became, said the Frau Direktor, quite insufferable, and so she herself resolved to put such armour-plate virtue to the test. At Carnival time, therefore, she dressed herself as a young officer for a ball at which the _Hofgesellschaft_ was to be present, and a very dashing figure she made, according to the picture. In this disguise she then proceeded to give the Countess the rush of her life. The gallant pursued the virtuous Countess all the evening, and was rewarded by being asked to escort her ladyship to her home. In the carriage the "Lieutenant's" attentions became still more pressing, when to his secret dismay, the fair creature suddenly melted entirely, cast herself into his arms, and swore she adored him. Arrived at her house, the "Lieutenant" beat a hasty retreat vowing all sorts of things for their next meeting, which naturally never took place. But the vanished Lieutenant did not resemble the gentlemen of Virginia who kiss and never tell, for the Countess' share in the story leaked out, and her reputation for unassailable devotion was irreparably damaged, to the great satisfaction of all her acquaintance. CHAPTER XIII HUMAN PASSIONS AND SMALLPOX