is very probable that she was sorry for this at heart, and
so at the present moment she is in a decidedly irritable and
discontented mood, and it is dangerous to touch her without gloves.
Unfortunately I neglected to use this consideration; and, as a
consequence, we stand on a most charming war-footing toward one
another."

He struck his boot impatiently with his riding-whip, put his left arm
through his young companion's right, and, striding rapidly forward with
his long legs, growled out:

"It's enough to drive a man wild when he sees how God's images are
disfigured--whether by saints or devils, it's all the same. Either
confined by strait-lacing or by nuns' robes, or else _decolletees_ to
the very waist. Believe me, my dear fellow, as far as the education of
the women of the upper classes is concerned, we are not much farther
advanced to-day than we were in the darkest middle ages, when a brothel
stood next door to a church. At least, we, down here in our envied
South, are not; though, to be sure, this Northern blood--"

"A North German?"

"Hum! North or middle German!--upon that point she is positively
fiendish! In the very first hour of our meeting, this Fraeulein asked me
what sort of society we had here--of course, the aristocratic society,
as it loves to call itself; for a mere crowd of human beings, without
the forms of etiquette, can never be regarded as human society. I
replied quietly that the so-called _good_ society here was the worst
one could possibly wish for, and that it was only in the so-called
_bad_ society that I had come across a few good comrades here and
there, with whom there was such a thing as living. Whereupon the
little princess looked at me as much as to say that she should never
have supposed, from my dress--which was anything but suited to the
_salon_--that my exclusion from polite society was otherwise than
involuntary. But I, pretending not to notice this, proceeded to explain
to her at length the reasons which caused me to be disgusted with the
_creme_ of our city; the strange odor of their _salons_--a mixture of
patchouli, incense, and the stable--their very doubtful French, and
their undoubtedly worse German; their almost sublime ignorance of all
that is generally considered to belong to education; and that _naive_
lack of knowledge in moral matters, which is generally to be found only
in convents, and which can only be properly fostered by an
ecclesiastical society and sancti