Possessing but indifferent taste, she nevertheless devoted much
time to the adornment of her person. She was small of stature,
but delicately made, and if her nervous desire to please had
granted to her outward personality a moment's repose during
the day, she might still have passed muster as a fairly good-
looking woman. Unfortunately she was animated by an unceas-
ing activity in trivial matters, and was rarely silent. Some
women make one think of a printed page in which there are
too many italics, and too many useless marks of exclamation.-^
At first, their constant cries of admii-ation and outbursts of
enthusiasm produce a vague sense of uneasiness in- the listener,
which soon develops to a feeling of positive distress and generally



GEEIFENSTEIN. 5

ends in a real and deepj-ooted dislike. At the beginning one
looks about anxiously for the object which could produce so
grotesque a smile. There is nothing, for the conversation has
been as lead, but the smile does not subside ; it only passes
through the endless variations that succeed each other from the
inane grin to the affected simper which is meant to be tender.
The whole face, moves perpetually, as the facial muscles of a
corpse, excited by an electric current, seem to parody all the
expression of living human sentiment.
But Frau .von Greifenstein was not in reality so foolish as
might have been thought. Her silliness was superficial. One
part of her life had been full of strange circumstances, and if
the whole truth were told it would appear that she had known
how to extract a large amount of personal advantage from
situations which to many persons would have seemed hopeless.
