“American society! The nobility is made up of ‘cattle kings’ and ‘wool barons’ and ‘merchant princes’ and between you and me, you’re just as good as the rest of ’em, whoever you may be. I must confess a great weakness for New England, but try as I may I cannot take any stock in its society. Why, my people, when they are calculating time reckon in centuries, not in decades. It so amuses me to see Lucy Pride (I love her dearly and I hope you do too) show off her tea service which belonged to some governor or other in the eighteenth century. I don’t call it ‘old,’ though I do call it pretty. I brought very little with me from Austria, only a few knickknacks, among them a set of tankards that have been in my family since the thirteenth century. I think them fairly antique. I’m going to tell you a story on myself before you hear it from someone else who might make me sound brutal. I had only been in this country a few years and I had heard so much about the ‘wool barons’ and so on that I thought perhaps the government had established a peerage. You’re laughing at my innocence and I don’t blame you! Well, a man named Mr. Puce (I have to chuckle at the name because it reminds me of the gloves I have always had my chauffeurs wear) came to dinner here and the person who brought him introduced him as ‘the Chicago merchant prince.’ How should I know any better? American names are so exotic, you know, to a foreigner, that it’s not a bit strange to think of a ‘king of Wyoming’ or a ‘grand duke of Iowa’ or ‘prince of Chicago,’ so poor me! I had him go in first to dinner. He was flattered half to death, and the only reason the Baron Kalenkoff didn’t leave at once in a fury was that he thought I was playing a joke!”

I could make no counter to this, and instead went back to the beginning of her anecdote. “I would like to see your tankards, Countess.”

She laughed richly. “I’m no collector, darling! I’m not interested in things. Art is my life. Make me happy and tell me that it’s yours too!”

“But I’m very green,” I told her. “I would like to make you happy, but I’m afraid all I can do is read.”

“Oh, but that’s marvelous! I hope you aren’t so modern that you will find what I like démodé, as Hope Mather does. I can still cry at Père Goriot. As for modern novels, they don’t touch me. Either they’re cold or gross. And need they be so difficult?”