Frau Elsa von Stuttgart before the war had her board and clothes. But her husband had forbidden her to get her hats at a certain little French shop in Unter den Linden that she had always patronised before her marriage. And with all his money, he decided that one pair of evening slippers would do even for a woman in the social position of a Prussian officer’s wife. They lived in a villa at Zehlendorff that was perfectly equipped with everything that he considered desirable. There was a grand piano of marvellous tone, though she didn’t even play the piano at all. She was a doctor of philosophy, who before her marriage had been a teacher at the High School in Berlin and her hobby, it happened, was books. She liked them in beautiful bindings and she always used to buy them that way. But of course she couldn’t any more because her husband said it was extravagance, quite useless extravagance. Well, really you know, maintenance may be slippers and hats, but it isn’t books after all. And she had a lovely house and a piano of marvellous tone. How hard it was about the slippers, I suppose only a woman can understand. You see Elsa von Stuttgart has pretty feet, small and dainty feet. Every other woman in her set has German feet. “Look at them,” she whispered to me at a _kaffee klatch_ one day in 1914. And I did. And I knew why her soul loved little satin slippers better than Beethoven or Lizst. She has them now once more. The house with the grand piano is closed and her husband is with his regiment. Elsa von Stuttgart in a class room is lecturing on philosophy again. She has rented a small apartment the walls of which are lined with books. You think the slippers a luxury for war-time perhaps? Well, she wrote me that she has done penance for them in extra meatless days to atone for the price.