_The word “Masochism” has been invented to characterize a unique species of erotic character frequently found in Sacher-Masoch’s stories._ [Illustration] THOU SHALT NOT KILL BY LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH Translated by Harriet Lieber Cohen. Copyrighted by Harriet Lieber Cohen. Countess Mara Barovic was the Circe, Omphale, and Semiramis of the mountainous part of Croatia. Old and young (men, be it understood) were at her feet; and this despite the fact that she was regarded as plain-looking rather than pretty. Her ugliness, however, was the sort that strikes attention, attracts consideration, and excites interest. Moreover, she boasted a “past” that cast a halo about the present. It was rumored that one of her lovers had “accidentally” shot her husband while out hunting, and that this accident had occurred at a time when the Count had become “embarrassing.” Besides, she was original. If it be true that woman is a work of art, as a celebrated poet has said, it must be borne in mind that in these days the agreeable and pleasing in art is no longer “the thing.” Cruel, unadorned truth is preferred to draped loveliness, in love as well as in art. The Countess belonged to the type demanded by the modern school. By her two most ardent admirers, Baron Kronenfels and Mr. De Broda, she was termed respectively the iconoclast and the naturalist. She mounted her horse like a hussar, was a dashing whip, and indulged a passionate fondness for hunting. One of her favorite pastimes was roaming field and forest in the picturesque costume of the Croatian peasant; and she could apply the horsewhip as dexterously and mercilessly to her creditors as to her refractory horses. The fair lady was head over ears in debt. There was nothing she could longer call her own, not even the furniture in Chateau Granic, not even the false braid which adorned her well-poised little head. The young aristocrats who danced attendance upon her ladyship explained the preference displayed by this Croatian Circe for the “wise men of the East”--as they called Kronenfels and De Broda--by the brilliant financial position of her two Jewish admirers. Of the two, Baron Kronenfels’s noble birth rested upon the more ancient foundation, and for that reason, perhaps, he enjoyed a certain priority in the fair lady’s preference. De Broda was a mere sapling in the forest of aristocracy, having been but recently ennobled. The unfeigned adoration he displayed for his armorial bearings made him the butt of endless practical jokes. His coat-of-arms glittered wherever it could find a resting-place. It shone upon the collar of his dog; it was emblazoned on his cigarettes, made especially for him at Laferme’s.