Closing the book, he slowly shakes his head, looks at me, considers a little, looks at me again, and then follows: “Do whatever you like!” And I, before he can defend himself, rush into his arms. “No, no, only what _thou likest_, not what _I like_, shall be done, now and always.” “You might just as well have said that in English,” he answers. “Oh, you dear good father of mine!” * * * * * Last year my sister, for the first time since her marriage, passed the winter in Vienna. Report said that her husband on the wedding journey had informed her that she should not set foot in the capital again until he had cured her of her “countess” ways. He is a tall, cold, haughty man, who barely vouchsafes to utter twenty words in a day, even when most loquacious. It is difficult to know what his tastes are. The sole interests he seems to have are his palace, his equipages, his servants’ liveries, and his wife’s toilets; and that merely to show them off. She makes merry over it, and sometimes says very witty things about it; but I think she would do better if she were to say them to his face instead of behind his back. She has no children, to my sorrow; I should so love to be an aunt. It was decided that I was to come out at one of the balls my sister was to give in the course of the season. I had already been to several soirées the previous winter with papa during Lent; thus had a tolerably extended acquaintance with society folk, and had been mostly struck by the dead level of quality when taken in the quantity. At seventeen one begins to exercise one’s thinking powers, and my reflection had been: If one could disembody the souls of all these fine people and let them go free (the men especially), it would be a sheer impossibility to distinguish one from the other. Their conversation was simply comical. I could tell off on my fingers the set questions: “Are you coming out next Carnival?” “Are you fond of dancing?” so often had they been put to me; and not a man among them had appeared to me to be one whit different from the crowd of others. One morning I was informed that papa and mamma desired to see me in the small drawing room--style: Empire, white and gold. Mamma was sitting upon the sofa, knitting woolen comforters for the Reformatory. With a dainty little white lace cap upon her head, and her white India cashmere morning dress, she looked like a queen or a saint. Papa was sitting beside her in an armchair, very erect and agitated, as could be easily seen from the blinking of his eyes, a trick he had when much moved. My Duphot, in her boundless diffidence, had chosen for her seat the smallest possible tabouret with the most slender of legs, and the effect of her corpulent person upon its ethereal support was killing. “Will you be pleased to be seated?” my father asked, with forced gayety, and I took a chair as close as possible to my Duphot, so as to be at hand to lend my aid in the event of a catastrophe.