the honors of her drawing-room with the most subtle tact, and was better
suited than any one to act as mediator between the Viennese and the French,
since she herself belonged to both nations. A German by birth, she had
married a Frenchman, lived several years in Paris with her husband, one of
the richest bankers in the capital, and now, being widowed, had come to
Vienna in order, as she said, to divert the minds of her countrymen from
the great grief which the loss of their beloved capital caused them.

Beautiful Leonore de Simonie certainly appeared to be thoroughly in earnest
in her purpose to divert their minds from their great grief. Every evening
her drawing-rooms were thrown open for the reception of guests; every
evening all the generals, French courtiers, and people who belonged to
good society in France were present; every evening more and more Germans
and Viennese went to Madame de Simonie's, until it seemed as if she
afforded Viennese and Parisian society a place of meeting where, forgetting
mutual aversion and hatred, they associated in love and harmony.

To be a visitor at Madame de Simonie's therefore soon became a synonym of
aristocracy in the new fashionable society of Vienna, which was composed of
so many different elements. The foreigners who had come to the Austrian
capital, attracted by the renown of the French emperor, or led by
selfishness, strove with special earnestness to obtain the _entrée_ to
Madame de Simonie's drawing-room, for there they were sure of meeting those
whose acquaintance was profitable; by whose meditation they might hope to
obtain access to the presence of the French emperor.

The day before Baroness Leonore had given a brilliant entertainment. Until
a late hour of the night all the windows of the story which she occupied in
one of the palaces on the Graben were brightly lighted; the curious,
characterless poor people had gathered in the street to watch the carriages