monplaces of the day; through his suavity and suppleness, his smiling
amiability, all the personal charm of him. She had always seen her
father important; she saw him so still. And she herself, at that time,
longed for importance, for every sort of worldly vanity: she had it in
her blood. As a young girl, she loved brilliancy, titles; loved
spacious, well-lighted rooms, fine carriages; loved to see men in stars
and ribbons, ladies in court-dress; loved to curtsey very low before the
King and Queen: the little Princess Wilhelmina was then still a baby....
Thanks to De Staffelaer, their receptions were sometimes attended by
members of the _corps diplomatique_ and of that particular set at the
Hague which fastens on to the diplomatists: the little band of people
who, at the Hague, are stared and gaped at wherever they go, who talk
loudly at the opera, swaggering in all the arrogance of their smartness
and conceit, looking down upon all and everything that does not form
part of their own little set and encouraged in their blatant
self-assertion by the Hague public, with its flattering tribute of
open-mouthed curiosity. She did not see all this, especially as a young
girl: she thought it grand if a Spanish marquis or a German count, a
member of one of the legations, showed himself for ten minutes at her
parents' receptions; and, if Mrs. This or the Freule[8] That, of "the
set," came for only five minutes, Constance would brag about it, with an
assumption of indifference, for the next three months. Vanity was born
in her blood and had been nourished at Batavia and Buitenzorg, where she
was made much of as the young daughter of the governor-general. Now, at
the Hague, full-fledged, she struggled, above all, to be invited to the
drawing-rooms of "the set." It was very difficult, though Bertha and she
had been presented at Court, though her parents still had ever so many
connections. She was constantly encountering coldness on the part of
"the set," coupled with great incivility, which she had to swallow; but
she had some of Papa's tact and she went on struggling: she left cards
on Mrs. This to all eternity, with a snobbishness for which she came to
blush later; she bowed and talked pleasantly, to all eternity, to the
Freule That, receiving nothing in return but a snub. She had found that
the Hague was not the same as Batavia; that, though you had been the
highest personage at Batavia, you were not so easily admitted into that
ver