t sense of the word,
she is 'a good match.'"

A FASHIONABLE WOMAN

It can easily be proved that Austria is far richer in talented men in
every domain, than North Germany, but while men are systematically
drilled there for the vocation which they choose, like the Prussian
soldiers are, with us they lack the necessary training, especially
technical training, and consequently very few of them get beyond mere
diletantism. Leo Wolfram was one of those intellectual diletantes, and
the more pleasure one took in his materials and characters, which were
usually boldly taken from real life, and in a certain political, and what
is still more, in a plastic plot, the more he was obliged to regret that
he had never learnt to compose or to mold his characters, or to write; in
one word, that he had never become a literary artist, but how greatly he
had in himself the materials for a master of narration, his "Dissolving
Views," and still more his _Goldkind_,[4] prove.

[Footnote 4: Golden Child.]

This Goldkind is a striking type of our modern society, and the novel of
that name contains all the elements of a classic novel, although of
course in a crude, unfinished state. What an exact reflection of our
social circumstances Leo Wolfram gave in that story our present
reminiscences will show, in which a lady of that race plays the principal
part.

It may be ten years ago, that every day four very stylishly dressed
persons went to dine in a corner of the small dining-room of one of the
best hotels in Vienna, who, both there and elsewhere, gave occasion
for a great amount of talk. They were an Austrian landowner, his charming
wife, and two young diplomatists, one of whom came from the North, while
the other was a pure son of the South. There was no doubt that the lady
came in for the greatest share of the general interest in every respect.

The practiced observer and discerner of human nature easily recognized
in her one of those characters which Goethe has so aptly named
"problematical," for she was one of those individuals who are always
dissatisfied and at variance with themselves and with the world, who are
a riddle to themselves, and who can never be relied on, and with the
interesting and captivating, though unfortunate contradictions in her
nature, she made a strong impression on everybody, even by her mere
outward appearance. She was one of those women who are called beautiful,
without their being really so. Her face,