For me this half-visionary world held the same intoxicating spell that many ears discover in Wagner's music. The Princess, when I described these scenes to her, showed a genuine though rather faint interest. At all events, before very long my explorations were interrupted by the arrival of some of her promised guests. These--a brother and sister--were in some ways modern enough, but in one way they suggested the period of _Wilhelm Meister_. They brought with them not only their servants. They brought with them also a retinue of two musicians, who emerged from their quarters in the evening, and played to us after dinner. But we had other music besides. The weather by this time had grown rapidly warmer, and, when these performers had retired, we went out on a balcony overlooking the great forecourt, and from some unseen quarter beyond the castle walls came night after night the vibrations of a gypsy band. Nor was this the only sound. From the frondage of the park close by there would come in answer to it the early notes of the nightingales. The first installment of visitors, with their attendant musicians, having departed, their places were presently taken by a distinguished Hungarian diplomat, Count ---- and his wife. When I say of the count, who spoke English perfectly, that one could not distinguish him from a highly placed English gentleman, I am paying him, no doubt, an insular, but I mean it to be a sincere, compliment. But the Princess had still another guest in reserve, on whose qualities, so I judged from her tones, she set even a higher store. This was a Hungarian lady, young, well born, and married, but unfortunately neglected by her husband, although she was extremely beautiful. As my mind was much engaged with the thoughts of old castles, and also with the composition of my own little work on Cyprus, I paid no great attention to what the Princess said in praise of this guest whose advent was now approaching. But when the lady arrived I felt that the praise was justified. As she and her husband are by this time beyond the reach both of praise and blame, I may say of her without fear of impertinence that she was a model of innocent beauty, that her conversation was as charming as her expression, and her dresses as charming as her conversation. I am myself not much addicted to cards, but when she proposed in the evenings to teach me the Hungarian game of Tarok I should not have been human had I failed to become her pupil. But I was never long in her company without being conscious of a feeling that she was a woman who, through no fault of her own, had already had a history, or was certain to have one some day. This feeling did not mislead me. A year later it was justified. I learned, by accident, that her history had been short, forlorn, and fatal. Its hidden actualities, reconstructed by my own imagination, I afterward combined in my novel _A Human Document_. CHAPTER XIII TWO WORKS ON SOCIAL POLITICS