pond; well, well, let them splash their best. What have we to do with their croaking?' Some things she said about the folly of attacking full-grown, habitual vice, by legislation, prison discipline, etc., were very true, and showed a great capacity for just thought. But what did she mean, or what did Schleiermacher mean, for she quoted him, by saying, 'La péché est une grâce de Dieu?' These are things people say to make one stare. Among other divorce cases we talked of was the following: — Herr S———, a distinguished man, between fifty and sixty, with grownup children and a wife who for five-and-twenty years had stood by his side a true and faithful, partner through good and evil fortune — especially a great deal of the latter. A certain Madame A———, a woman about thirty, bien conservée, rather pretty, and extremely coquettish, made it her business to please Mr. S———, and succeeded so well that he soon announced to his wife his desire to be divorced from her, and to marry Madame A———, who on her side was to divorce her husband. Poor Madame S——— could hardly believe her senses. She was almost stupefied. She expostulated, resisted, pleaded their children — marriageable daughters — all in vain. Mr. S——— said he could not be happy without Madame A———. In short, as may be imagined, he wore out his wife's resistance, and the blameless, repudiated, and heart-broken wife took her children and retired into Old Prussia. Madame A——— then became Madame S———. But the most curious thing was that the ci-devant husband remained on terms of the greatest intimacy, and became the tame cat of the house. When Mr. S——— went a journey his wife accompanied him a certain way, and Mr. A——— went with them to escort her back, as a matter of course.
"At a ball given at C———, Mr. and Madame S——— were invited. He came alone, and apologized to the lady of the house about his wife's absence. She hoped Madame S——— was not ill. 'Oh, no; but Mr. A——— has just arrived, and you understand she could not leave him alone the first evening.'
"My maid Nannie told me a curious illustration of the position of servants here. The maid belonging to the master of the house, has, it seems, a practice of running out, and being gone for hours without leave. On Sunday last she had leave; Monday, ditto; Tuesday, ditto; and was out the whole of those evenings. Wednesday she took leave, and did not return till after tea. Her mistress asked her where she had been; she refused to answer, on which her mistress pressed her. 'Well,' she said, 'if I won't tell you, you can't hang me for it.' With which answer the lady went away content. Another day the master, who is lame, came down into the kitchen and said, 'I have left my spectacles; I wish you would run up for them.' 'Oh,' said she, 'I am washing dishes.' The droll thing is that they say they are only too glad to have this steady and obliging person, because she is honest — a thing almost unknown here.
"A great many ladies in Berlin have evenings on which they receive — especially the ministers' wives — not their friends, but all the world. If you don't go for two or three weeks, they tell you of it - the number of omissions is chalked up against you. Nor, except in two or three of the more exotic, can you look in for half an hour and come away. People ask you why you go, and where you are going to. In many houses you are expected to take leave. Then you have the satisfaction of being told where you were last night, and what you said; who sat next you, and especially that you did not admire Berlin, or something in it. Of course you deny, equivocate, palliate, lie. If you have the smallest pretension to be vornehm (fine), you can only live Unter den Linden, or in the Wilhelms-strasse.
"Social life does not exist in Berlin, though people are always in company, and one is, as Ranke said, gehetzt (hunted). In the fashionable parties one always sees the same faces — faces possessed by ennui. The great matter is for the men to show their decorations and the women their gowns, and to be called excellency. Generally speaking, it strikes me that the Prussians have no confidence in their own individual power of commanding respect. Much as they hold to all the old ideas and distinctions about birth, even that does not enable them to assume an upright independent attitude, not even when combined with wealth. Count G———, a man of old Saxon nobility, with large estates and the notions and feelings of an English aristocrat, tells me that he is completely shouldered in Berlin society, because he neither has nor will have any official title, wears no orders, and, in short, stands upon his own personal distinctions. The idea of going about the world stark naked to one's mere name! Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Canning — a German would be ashamed.
"The other day I went up three pair of
