"Virtue, what is virtue?" Fanny had once cried to Pauli when some thorn or other had pressed deeply into her white flesh. And what _was_ virtue in that starving city? Generous giving in the end assumed the supreme mien of virtue, had, indeed, usurped the place of all virtues, theological and human. It was all, to the family, whichever way they looked, confusingly the triumph of Fanny's sins over their own virtues. Fanny was inclined, too, to be pious,--in her way and at her time. She was apt to enter any church she was passing; what the prayers she offered up, who shall say? Not entirely of thanksgiving that in the starving city she had plenty. Perhaps she begged not to reach old age,--to have time on her deathbed. That was what she hated to think of. Old age! Alone! Death! Judgment! Whom the gods love of Fanny's kind they certainly snatch young. Yet, how gay she could be! What life was in her! Even above her beauty was that sense of flooding life in her veins. 'Tis true her temper easily ran high. Maria knew well the signs of rising choler; blasts of that temper blew about impartially. Indeed she was more apt to administer a box on the ear than to bestow a kiss. It was often said by the recipients of the first-mentioned gift that never was she so handsome as when lightnings were flashing from her deep eyes. It was all part and parcel of poor Fanny. It was extraordinary how the family got used to her in their hearts, though sometimes in words they still condemned her--and ah, if Fanny hadn't been _their_ Fanny! However, there she was and apparently as bright as one of those American dollars to be gazed upon in the windows of exchange bureaux, shedding their radiance over the dull waste of paper money. Obviously they couldn't be seen with her, nor she with them,--in the end no one could have said just which way it was. However, from her all blessings flowed. Pauli called her the family Doxology, and once when he had run into her coming out of St. Stephen's, he had said, with his wide, flashing smile: "Na, Fanny, thanking the Lord God for his manifold blessings, that you will later pass on to the rest of us?" And Fanny had called him a "stupid ox," and smiled and blushed and flicked him ever so lightly with the tail of her silver fox. It was one of Fanny's many gifts, that way of blushing that she still had, would perhaps always have. It was indeed a confusing situation. The yard-sticks of the old days were broken or mislaid and anyway few had the energy to use them. When Fanny had been very ill with grippe in November, Corinne and Kaethe, summoned by Maria, had gone to see her for the first time; they had let it be known afterwards that it was just like any other place only much nicer, and that Fanny had been saying her rosary. Nothing hung together somehow.