“Albrecht,” Marianne called as she entered the long, low library, where her husband was seated at the imposing desk that had once been the count’s. “You must come and see—it’s like a carnival!”

Albrecht looked up at her, still composing a sentence in his head. He was a tall, craggy-faced man with a high forehead and unruly eyebrows that often gave him the appearance of frowning when he was not.

“Only for a moment, before everyone gets here.” She held out her hand. “Come. The fresh air will clear your head.”

“No, no, not yet,” he said, waving her off and returning his attention to the letter he was writing.

Oh, come on, Marianne would have normally chided, but tonight, on account of the party, she bit her tongue. Albrecht was a perfectionist and workaholic. She would never change this. He was drafting a letter to an old law school acquaintance in the British Foreign Office and had sought her opinion on alternate sentence constructions many times. The annexation of the Sudetenland will only be the beginning. I urge you to beware of our leadership’s aggression versus If we are not vigilant, our leader’s aggressive intentions will only be the beginning . . .

Both ways make your point was Marianne’s response. Just pick one. But Albrecht was a deliberator. He did not even notice the irritation in her tone. His own emotions were never complicated or petty. He was the sort of man who contemplated grand abstractions like the Inalienable Rights of Man or the Problems of Democracy while shaving. It rendered him oblivious to everyday things.

Marianne restrained herself to a demonstrative sigh, turned, and left him to his work.

Back in the banquet hall, the countess scolded one of her young disciples from her wheelchair: “Not Schumann,” she said, “God forbid! We might as well play Wagner . . . no, something Italian. Something decadent enough to shock any Brownshirt idiot who comes tonight.”

Even in her old age, the countess was a rebel, followed at all turns by young artists and socialites. French by birth, German by marriage, she had always been a controversial figure. As a young woman, she had hosted evening salons famous for their impromptu dancing and intellectual arguments on risqué subjects like modern art and French philosophy. Why she had married the proper, fusty old count, a man twenty years her senior and famous for falling asleep at the dinner table, was the subject of much not-very-kind speculation.

For Marianne, who was the product of an oppressively proper Prussian upbringing, the countess had always been an object of admiration. The woman was unafraid to step beyond the role of mother and Hausfrau into the fray of male power and intellectual life. She spoke her own mind and did things her own way. Even from their first meeting years ago, when Marianne was a young university student dating her professor (Albrecht), she had wanted to become a woman like the countess.

“It looks wonderful out there,” Marianne said, gesturing toward the courtyard. “Monsieur Pareille is a magician.”