When I went to thank her, I was still quite weak. I found her, as usual, working on one of those pieces of needlework she rarely had the patience to complete. My thanks surprised her; she had already forgotten that she had sent me flowers. My dear, that outraged me. The beauty of a gift is diminished when the person who gave it attaches no importance to it. At Princess Catherine’s, the shutters were almost always closed; by preference she lived in a perpetual twilight, yet even so, the dusty odor of the street invaded her room. It was apparent that summer was beginning. I thought, with overwhelming fatigue, of all I would have to endure in those four summer months. I imagined the lessons becoming scarcer, the nightly futility of going out in quest of a little fresh air, the nervous irritation, the insomnia—and other dangers, too. I was afraid of getting sick again, or worse than sick; and I ended up complaining aloud that the summer had come so quickly. The Princess de Mainau spent the summer at Wand, on an ancient domain she had inherited. For me, Wand was only a vague name like all places we do not believe we shall ever live in; it took me some time to understand that the princess was inviting me there. She invited me out of pity. She invited me gaily, already putting her mind on choosing a room for me, taking, so to speak, possession of my life until the following autumn. I was ashamed, then, to have looked, by complaining, as though I had hoped for something. I accepted. I lacked the courage to punish myself by refusing, and anyway, my dear, you are well aware that one did not resist Princess Catherine.

I went to Wand planning to spend only three weeks there; I stayed several months. They were long, utterly still months. They flowed by slowly, mechanically, truly imperceptibly. One might say that I was waiting without being aware of it. Life there was ceremonial yet simple at the same time; I enjoyed the peacefulness of this easier existence. I cannot say that Wand reminded me of Woroïno. And yet it gave the same impression of age and peaceful continuance. Wealth seemed to have installed itself in that house long ago, just as poverty had in ours. The Princes de Mainau had always been wealthy; one could therefore not be astonished that they remained so, and even the poor were not upset by it. The prince and princess received a great deal; we lived amid books newly arrived from France, scores open on the piano, and the jingling of harnesses. In those cultured yet frivolous surroundings, intelligence seemed simply an additional luxury. No doubt the prince and princess were not really my friends: they were merely my protectors. Laughing, the prince would call me his musician extraordinaire; in the evening it was expected that I should go to the piano. I was quite aware that one could play for those worldly people only music that was banal, as superficial as the words that had just been spoken; yet there is a certain beauty in those forgotten ariettas.