I was more interested in the last of the three, because I had listened while Frau Krupp von Bohlen repeated to the children a wonderful story about the intelligence of some fish in the Naples Aquarium; and all I knew then of General von Bernhardi was that he was considered a great soldier, and had been the first officer to ride into Paris in 1871, or some tale of that sort. However, the minute I saw him I felt that here was a tremendous personality, and an intensely repellent one, a man to be reckoned with. I determined to ask a great many questions concerning him of the Countess, who knew everything about everybody, and did not object to telling what she knew with embellishments. My name was politely mentioned by the host, and the visiting gentlemen all bowed to me. The only one who did so stiffly, as if he grudged bending his thick, short neck for my benefit, was General von Bernhardi. He gave me one sharp look from under his rather beetling eyebrows, and I wondered if he despised all women, or had merely taken a distaste to me. "You are English?" he asked shortly, in German, his tone being that of a man accustomed to throw out commands as you might throw a battle-ax. "She was born in Washington," said Herr Krupp von Bohlen, in his pleasant, cultivated voice. "Washington is the most interesting city of the United States, and holds pleasant memories for me. Miss ----'s grandfather was a distinguished American naval officer." As he said this, he gave me a faint, rather humorous smile, which I interpreted as a warning or request not to try explaining my antecedents. "Ach! That is better!" grunted the General. And I knew that, whatever might be his attitude toward women in general, Englishwomen were anyhow beyond the pale. (Later I heard from the Countess that women were not much higher than the "four-footed animal kingdom" for Bernhardi; that he loudly contradicted his wife, even at hotel tables, when they traveled together; that he always walked ahead of her in the street, and pushed past her or even other ladies, if strangers to him, in order to go first through a doorway.) The General condescended to glance at me, and I thought again that he was the most ruthless, brutal-looking man I had ever met, the very type of militarism in flesh and blood--especially blood. "You are a friend of the English?" he inquired. I dared to stand up for England by answering that I thought her the greatest country in the world. "That is nonsense," was his comment. I shall never forget it, or the cutting way in which it was spoken.