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Updated: June 11, 2025
She came nearer and looked into my face, laughing maliciously. "Or is it the Countess? Haven't they made enough love to the Countess, or too much, or what?" "My dear Victoria," I said, "you must make allowances. The Countess is the prettiest woman in Forstadt." My sister curtseyed with an ironical smile. "I mean, of course," I added, "since William Adolphus carried you off to Gronenstahl."
He was whimsically resigned to his temperament, but the mischief had not touched his brain. Then the Baroness' hold on him was not like Coralie Mansoni's; he would fight no duel for her. He would only make a fool of the greatest man in Forstadt. That feat was always so easy to him. "Well," he said, "I must return to my misery." "And I to my happiness," said I. "But you'll come to Artenberg?"
Suddenly, as I passed in meditation through a quiet street, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I knew only one man who would stop me in that way. Was he here again, risen again, in Forstadt again, for work, or mirth, or mischief? He came in fitting with the visit I had paid. I turned and found his odd, wry smile on me, the knit brows and twinkling eyes.
For my part, I felt that it was monstrously bad taste in him to come and be miserable here and now in Forstadt. But he overshot his mark. "Good God, my dear Struboff!" I cried in extreme annoyance, "think how little it matters, how little any of us care, even, if you like, how little you ought to care yourself! You've tumbled down on the gravel; very well!
Perhaps she did not like the prospect of being no longer at the head of Forstadt society. "There's nobody in Europe who would have refused you, I suppose," she pursued. "Yes, she's lucky with a vengeance." I began to laugh. Victoria frowned a little, as though my laughter annoyed her. However I had my laugh out; the picture of my position, sketched by Victoria, deserved that.
"She never favoured you before me." He caught the ambiguity of my words, and laughed again. Struboff turned toward me with a stare. "You also knew my wife?" he asked. "I had the honour," said I. "In Forstadt." "In Forstadt! Do you know the king?" "Not so well as I could wish," I answered. "About as well as I know Wetter here." "That's admirably well!" cried Wetter. "Well enough not to trust me."
Born heaven knew where, and of parents whom I doubt whether she herself could name, seeming to hail from the borderland of Italy and France, a daughter of the Riviera, she had strayed and tumbled through a youth of which she would speak in moments of expansion. I, however, need say nothing of it. When I saw her first she was playing a small part in a light opera at Forstadt.
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