n of her charmingly successful pictures, as
well as from a hundred other things; all the more as her aunt and her
bridegroom seemed to make so light of the expense which was required for
her amusements.

And now they were to break up. But this could not be managed in an
ordinary way. They were one day making fun of Charlotte aloud, declaring
that they would soon have eaten out her winter stores, when the nobleman
who had represented Belisarius, being fortunately a man of some wealth,
carried away by Luciana's charms to which he had been so long devoting
himself, cried out unthinkingly, "Why not manage then in the Polish
fashion? You come now and eat up me, and then we will go on round the
circle." No sooner said than done. Luciana willed that it should be so.
The next day they all packed up and the swarm alighted on a new
property. There indeed they found room enough, but few conveniences and
no preparations to receive them. Out of this arose many _contretemps_,
which entirely enchanted Luciana; their life became ever wilder and
wilder. Huge hunting-parties were set on foot in the deep snow, attended
with every sort of disagreeableness; women were not allowed to excuse
themselves any more than men, and so they trooped on, hunting and
riding, sledging and shouting, from one place to another, till at last
they approached the residence, and there the news of the day and the
scandals and what else forms the amusement of people at courts and
cities gave the imagination another direction, and Luciana with her
train of attendants (her aunt had gone on some time before) swept at
once into a new sphere of life.

FROM OTTILIE'S DIARY

"We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself
out, only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the
unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.

"We venture upon anything in society except only what involves a
consequence.

"We never learn to know people when they come to us: we must go to them
to find out how things stand with them.

"I find it almost natural that we should see many faults in visitors,
and that directly they are gone we should judge them not in the most
amiable manner. For we have, so to say, a right to measure them by our
own standard. Even cautious, sensible men can scarcely keep themselves
in such cases from being sharp censors.

"When, on the contrary, we are staying at the houses of others, when we
have see