Courts and courtiers -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Germany -- Fiction
Countess Löwenjoul on her side supplied food for conversation in a
quieter but no less strange way. At first, when her personality and
position were not yet known in the city, she had attracted the gibes of
the street urchins, because, while out walking alone, she talked to
herself softly and deliberately, and accompanied her words with lively
and at the same time graceful and elegant gestures. But she had shown
such mildness and goodness to the children who shouted after her and
tugged at her dress, she had spoken to them with such affection and
dignity, that her persecutors had slunk away abashed and confused, and
later, when she became known, respect for her relations with the famous
guests secured her from molestation. However, some unintelligible
anecdotes were secretly circulated about her. One man told how the
Countess had given him a gold piece with instructions that he should box
the ears of a certain old woman who was understood to have made some
unseemly proposal or other to her. The man had pocketed the gold piece,
without, however, discharging his commission.
Further, it was declared as a fact that the Countess had accosted the
sentry in front of the Fusiliers' Barracks and had told him at once to
arrest the wife of the sergeant of one of the companies because of her
moral shortcomings. She had written too a letter to the Colonel of the
regiment to the effect that all sorts of secret and unspeakable
abominations went on inside the barracks. Whether she was right in her
facts, heaven only knew. But many people at once concluded that she was
wrong in her head. At any rate, there was no time to investigate the
matter, for six weeks were soon past, and Samuel N. Spoelmann, the
millionaire, went away.
He went away after having had his portrait painted by Professor von
Lindemann--an expensive portrait too, which he gave to the proprietor of
the "Spa Court" as a memento; he went away with his daughter, the
Countess, and Doctor Watercloose, with Percival, the chamber-velocipede,
and his servants; went by special train to the South, with the view of
spending the winter on the Riviera, whither the two New York journalists
had hastened ahead of him, and of then crossing back home again. It was
all over. The _Courier_ wished Mr. Spoelmann a hearty farewell and
expressed the hope that the cure would be found to have done him good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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