ed by the secretary-general; but there it ended. And this was
the despair of Adolphine, who, ever since Van Naghel had become a
minister, wanted to see her husband a minister too, a hope which there
was not the least prospect of ever realizing. And so Adolphine had to
look on at all Van Naghel and Bertha's distinction with envious eyes;
and, however much she might boast of everything that belonged to her,
that distinction, which she would never achieve, remained a torture to
her vanity. It had come of itself, in the course of Van Naghel and
Bertha's life--through Papa's patronage, through Van Naghel's own
connections and his Overijssel family, which had always played a part in
the political history of the country--it had come of itself that not
only had Van Naghel attained a high level in his career, but his house
had become a political and also an aristocratic _salon_ at the Hague, as
though, through their respective connections, Van Naghel and Bertha,
after Papa van Lowe's death, had continued the tradition which, after
the viceregal period, had prevailed in the Alexanderstraat, where Mamma
was now left peacefully leading her after-life as an old woman and a
widow. On the other hand, Adolphine's house, in spite of all her wishes
and endeavours, had never been anything more than an omnium-gatherum, a
rubbish heap. She lacked tact and the gift of discrimination. She
thought that for her too to have a busy house would give her something
of Bertha's importance and distinction; and so she paid visits right and
left and had a multitude of incongruous acquaintances, all belonging to
different sets: the orthodox set; the Indian set; the official set; the
military set; but not, alas, the Court set nor the leaven of aristocracy
which, after Papa's death, at first used to leave a card, once a year or
so, but had gradually dropped her. And so it had come of itself, in the
course of their, Van Saetzema and Adolphine's, life, that their house
had become an ever-increasing omnium-gatherum: a busy house, it is true,
where they "saw people," but a nondescript house, where one never knew
whom one would meet nor what the hostess was really aiming at. There was
something maddening about Adolphine's way of turning her house into a
busy house, crammed with people. She would propose, for instance, to
give a small dinner five days later; she would ask eight people, but
remember, two days before the dinner, that she might as well ask a few
more