opposed her husband's stern military discipline of those seemingly
typical mädchens. It was her policy to keep the martinet in a good
humor, and after all--she had condemned herself not to think--what
better destiny than to be a German woman of the higher aristocracy? They
might have been born into the middle class, where there were quite as
many tyrants as in the patrician, and vastly fewer compensations. At the
age of forty-four she believed herself to be a philosopher.

Six months before Mariette's marriage and shortly after the birth and
death of her last child, Frau von Niebuhr suddenly returned to her bed,
prostrate, on the verge of collapse. The count raged that any wife of
his should dare to be ill or absent (when not fulfilling patriotic
obligations), consult her own selfish whims by having nerves and lying
speechless in bed. But he had a very considerable respect for Herr
Doktor Meyers--a rank plebeian but the best doctor in Berlin--and when
that family adviser, as autocratic as himself, ordered the Frau Gräfin
to go to a sanatorium in the Austrian Dolomites--but alone, mind
you!--and remain as long as he--I, myself, Herr Graf!--deemed advisable,
with no intercourse, personal or chirographical with her family, the
Head of the House of Niebuhr angrily gave his consent and sent for a
sister to chaperon his girls.

The countess remained until the eve of Mariette's wedding, and she
passed those six months in one of the superlatively beautiful mountain
resorts of Austria. She was solitary, for the most part, and she did an
excessive amount of thinking. She returned to her duties with a deep
disgust of life as she knew it, a cynical contempt for women, and a
profound sense of revolt. Her natural diplomacy she had increased
tenfold.