e out, I was not pleased
to see her again so soon! but a young lady who lived by herself was on
no account to be neglected. I was only to submit to her authority, and
would certainly be grateful to her afterwards.

I put on my hat silently and resignedly. I could not even feel angry at
her clumsy and good natured tone, though it made me suffer bodily pain.

Chattering incessantly she dragged me towards the winter grounds, as
the most sheltered part of the Wassermauer is called, for there an old
cloister and its high garden-wall keep off all cold winds, evergreen
shrubs flourish and the rose-bushes are still covered with roses. This
place is always crowded, the band plays and the whole society of
strangers walk there or sit basking in the sunshine. My protectress
seemed purposely to have brought me here with the intention of
introducing me to this beau monde. I had to run the gauntlet of a
curious, but to me quite indifferent crowd of ladies and gentlemen. I
saw not one face that pleased me, heard not one word that reached my
heart. Then the heat under those arbours, the noise of the importunate
brass band, and the rebellion which was chafing within me against this
soft tyranny, nearly drove me distracted.

Still more revolting to me than the dull unfeelingness of the healthy,
was the behaviour of many of my fellow sufferers. There sat a young
countess who as I heard had been parted from her husband, in order to
avoid all excitement, but she was not too ill to notice my simple
old-fashioned dress, which she scanned from head to foot, and then with
a crushing look, she wrapped herself up in her cashemere burnouss, as I
sat on the bench beside her.

And that young girl who treated me as an old acquaintance in the first
five minutes, and told me all the scandal of Meran, though death was
written in her face, and her cough went to my heart. Are those figures
of wax, dressed up automatons, who exhibit all their old minauderies,
though when spring comes they will have to lie in their coffins.

It seemed to me quite a deliverance when the dinner-bell of the hotel
de la poste rang, and most of the company departed and my protectress
had to go to her sick friend. I hardly bid her good-bye. I could no
longer speak, or listen to a word, for I felt quite paralized; so she
has at last obtained her object and tried her cure on me, and the
result is, that both in mind and body I am more dead than alive.
Certainly that is a sort of