been handsomely portioned when they entered the army, and Mariette when
she married, but the excellent count, to relieve the increasing monotony
of days no longer enlivened by maneuvers and boudoirs, had amused
himself on the stock exchange. His judgment had been singularly bad and
he had dropped most of his capital and lived on the rest.

The town house must be sold and the countess and her daughters retire to
her castle in the Saxon Alps. As there were no portions for the girls,
the haunting terrors of matrimony were laid.

The four women took their comparative poverty with equanimity. The
countess had been as practical and economical as all German housewives,
even when relieved by housekeepers and stewards, and she calculated
that with a meager staff of servants and two years of seclusion she
should be able to furnish a flat in Berlin and pay a year's rent in
advance. Then by living for half the year on her estate she should save
enough for six highly agreeable months in the capital. Perhaps she might
let her castle to some rich brewer or American; and this she eventually
did.

Lili was given permission to study for the operatic stage and spend the
following winter in Dresden, where Mariette's husband was now quartered.
It was just before they moved to the country that the Gräfin said to her
girls as they sat at coffee in the dismantled house:

"You shall have all that I never had, fulfil all the secret ambitions of
my younger heart. If you are individuals, prove it. You may go on the
stage, write, paint, study law, medicine, what you will. You have been
bred aristocrats and aristocrats you will remain. It is not liberty that
vulgarizes. Don't hate men. They have charming phases and moods; but