The end of the story was that soon afterward Elvira married Doris, alias Joseph Tiefenbacher, ensign on a ship of the line in the Austrian navy, and was perfectly happy in her short married life. PART TWO 1862–1872 V ENTERING THE WORLD Engaged · The engagement ended · Baden · Marietta · Season in Rome · Carnival at Venice And now I was to be taken “into the world.” Our name might have given us the right to move among the highest aristocracy, for there is doubtless not a family of the high nobility of Austria with which we were not connected by blood or by marriage. But one is ill acquainted with this high nobility if one thinks that name and kinship suffice to get one received. For this there is required (it was especially so in my youth; now they have come to be somewhat less exclusive) first and foremost the possession of sixteen great-great-grandparents; in other words, the right of admission to court. This we had not—my mother was not _Geborene_; besides, our means were also very modest; so it was not possible for us to attain to the first society—the _société_, as it styled itself—of Vienna. That stung me; oh, what a vain, superficial thing I was! To think it was essential to the happiness of life to move among the _crème_, and to think I was suffering an unmerited wrong by the withholding of this happiness! Now it came to pass that one of the richest men in Vienna sued for my hand through the mediation of the author Joseph von Weilen, who used to call at our house. Mother and guardian declared themselves favorable. To be sure the suitor was not an aristocrat, and already fifty-two years old. But he was willing to surround my existence and my mother’s with the utmost splendor, villas, castles, palaces,—I was dazzled and said “yes.”