yearly to the baths, to dine once with about eighteen families of
regular Kur guests. In return he would give a dinner of all the
eighteen at once. And, since these dinners were rather expensive
(you had to take the Grand Duke and a good many of his suite and
any members of the diplomatic bodies that might be
there)--Florence and Leonora, putting their heads together, didn't
see why we shouldn't give the Grand Duke his dinner together.
And so we did. I don't suppose the Serenity minded that economy,
or even noticed it. At any rate, our joint dinner to the Royal
Personage gradually assumed the aspect of a yearly function.
Indeed, it grew larger and larger, until it became a sort of closing
function for the season, at any rate as far as we were concerned. I
don't in the least mean to say that we were the sort of persons who
aspired to mix "with royalty." We didn't; we hadn't any claims; we
were just "good people." But the Grand Duke was a pleasant,
affable sort of royalty, like the late King Edward VII, and it was
pleasant to hear him talk about the races and, very occasionally, as
a bonne bouche, about his nephew, the Emperor; or to have him
pause for a moment in his walk to ask after the progress of our
cures or to be benignantly interested in the amount of money we
had put on Lelöffel's hunter for the Frankfurt Welter Stakes.

But upon my word, I don't know how we put in our time. How
does one put in one's time? How is it possible to have achieved
nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it? Nothing
whatever, you understand. Not so much as a bone penholder,
carved to resemble a chessman and with a hole in the top through
which you could see four views of Nauheim. And, as for
experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings--nothing
either. Upon my word, I couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady