A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly, especially when the instruction is by the way of a small woman’s hand. * * * * * After dinner she drives to the Pergola Theater. As she descends the stairs in her black velvet dress with its large collar of ermine and with a diadem of white roses on her hair, she is literally stunning. I open the carriage-door, and help her in. In front of the theater I leap from the driver’s seat, and in alighting she leaned on my arm, which trembled under the sweet burden. I open the door of her box, and then wait in the vestibule. The performance lasts four hours; she receives visits from her cavaliers, the while I grit my teeth with rage. It is way beyond midnight when my mistress’s bell sounds for the last time. “Fire!” she orders abruptly, and when the fire-place crackles, “Tea!” When I return with the samovar, she has already undressed, and with the aid of the negress slipped into a white negligee. Haydée thereupon leaves. “Hand me the sleeping-furs,” says Wanda, sleepily stretching her lovely limbs. I take them from the arm-chair, and hold them while she slowly and lazily slides into the sleeves. She then throws herself down on the cushions of the ottoman. “Take off my shoes, and put on my velvet slippers.” I kneel down and tug at the little shoe which resists my efforts. “Hurry, hurry!” Wanda exclaims, “you are hurting me! just you wait—I will teach you.” She strikes me with the whip, but now the shoe is off. “Now get out!” Still a kick—and then I can go to bed. * * * * * To-night I accompanied her to a soiree. In the entrance-hall she ordered me to help her out of her furs; then with a proud smile, confident of victory, she entered the brilliantly illuminated room. I again waited with gloomy and monotonous thoughts, watching hour after hour run by. From time to time the sounds of music reached me, when the door remained open for a moment. Several servants tried to start a conversation with me, but soon desisted, since I knew only a few words of Italian. Finally I fell asleep, and dreamed that I murdered Wanda in a violent attack of jealousy. I was condemned to death, and saw myself strapped on the board; the knife fell, I felt it on my neck, but I was still alive— Then the executioner slapped my face. No, it wasn’t the executioner; it was Wanda who stood wrathfully before me demanding her furs. I am at her side in a moment, and help her on with it. There is a deep joy in wrapping a beautiful woman into her furs, and in seeing and feeling how her neck and magnificent limbs nestle in the precious soft furs, and to lift the flowing hair over the collar. When she throws it off a soft warmth and a faint fragrance of her body still clings to the ends of the hairs of sable. It is enough to drive one mad. * * * * *