The Fitz-Boodle Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray
page 58 of 107 (54%)
page 58 of 107 (54%)
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in the second floor of a house in the Schwapsgasse; where, with his
private income and his revenues as Chancellor, amounting together to some 300L. per annum, he maintained such a state as very few other officers of the Grand-Ducal Crown could exhibit. The Baron is married to Marie Antoinette, a Countess of the house of Kartoffelstadt, branches of which have taken root all over Germany. He has no sons, and but one daughter, the Fraulein OTTILIA. The Chancellor is a worthy old gentleman, too fat and wheezy to preside at the Privy Council, fond of his pipe, his ease, and his rubber. His lady is a very tall and pale Roman-nosed Countess, who looks as gentle as Mrs. Robert Roy, where, in the novel, she is for putting Baillie Nicol Jarvie into the lake, and who keeps the honest Chancellor in the greatest order. The Fraulein Ottilia had not arrived at Kalbsbraten when the little affair between me and Dorothea was going on; or rather had only just come in for the conclusion of it, being presented for the first time that year at the ball where I--where I met with my accident. At the time when the Countess was young, it was not the fashion in her country to educate the young ladies so highly as since they have been educated; and provided they could waltz, sew, and make puddings, they were thought to be decently bred; being seldom called upon for algebra or Sanscrit in the discharge of the honest duties of their lives. But Fraulein Ottilia was of the modern school in this respect, and came back from the pension at Strasburg speaking all the languages, dabbling in all the sciences: an historian, a poet,--a blue of the ultramarinest sort, in a word. What a difference there was, for instance, between poor, simple Dorothea's love of novel reading and the profound encyclopaedic learning of Ottilia! |
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