a kaffee klatch one day in 1914. And I did. And I knew why her soul loved little satin slippers better than Beethoven or Lizst. She has them now once more. The house with the grand piano is closed and her husband is with his regiment. Elsa von Stuttgart in a class room is lecturing on philosophy again. She has rented a small apartment the walls of which are lined with books. You think the slippers a luxury for war time perhaps? Well, she wrote me that she has done penance for them in extra meatless days to atone for the price.
In France the Countess Madelaine de Ranier lived in a château of the old aristocracy. And she had a fortune of hundreds of thousands of francs but not a sou to spend as she pleased. You would have thought that she had everything that heart could wish, until you caught unawares the wistful expression in her eyes when they forgot their smiling. Madelaine de Ranier, having no children of her own, would have loved to write checks for the charities that took care of other people's children. But she couldn't. It was a very large dot that she had brought to her husband. But by the laws of France he administered it. Out of the income, he of course paid her bills. The third year of her marriage there occurred to her the idea for a confidential arrangement which she made with her dressmaker for doubling on the bills submitted for her evening gowns and dividing the proceeds accruing. It was the Countess' only source of ready money. She kept it in the secret drawer of her jewel case,
