“And my voice?” asked Lili timidly.  But the Frau Graefin shook her head.  “There I cannot help you.  He thinks an artistic career would disgrace his family, and that is the end of it.  Moreover, he regards women of any class in public life as a disgrace to Germany.  My assistance must be passive—­apparently.  It will be enough to have no worse.  Take my word and Mariette’s for that.”

The Graefin, true to her word, quietly disposed of the several suitors approved by her husband, and although the autocrat sputtered and raged—­the Graefin, her youngest daughter shrewdly surmised, rather encouraged these exciting tempers—­arguing that these three girls bade fair to remain on his hands for ever, he ended always by agreeing that the young officers were unworthy of an alliance with the ancient and honorable House of Niebuhr.

The battles ended abruptly when Gisela was eighteen and a fat Lieutenant of Uhlans, suing for the hand of the youngest born, and vehemently supported by the Graf, had just been turned adrift.  The Graf dropped dead in his club.  He left a surprisingly small estate for one who had presented so pompous a front to the world.  But not only had his sons been handsomely portioned when they entered the army, and Mariette when she married, but the excellent count, to relieve the increasing monotony of days no longer enlivened by maneuvers and boudoirs, had amused himself on the stock exchange.  His judgment had been singularly bad and he had dropped most of his capital and lived on the rest.

The town house must be sold and the countess and her daughters retire to her castle in the Saxon Alps.  As there were no portions for the girls, the haunting terrors of matrimony were laid.

The four women took their comparative poverty with equanimity.  The countess had been as practical and economical as all German housewives, even when relieved by housekeepers and stewards, and she calculated that with a meager staff of servants and two years of seclusion she should be able to furnish a flat in Berlin and pay a year’s rent in advance.  Then by living for half the year on her estate she should save enough for six highly agreeable months in the capital.  Perhaps she might let her castle to some rich brewer or American; and this she eventually did.

Lili was given permission to study for the operatic stage and spend the following winter in Dresden, where Mariette’s husband was now quartered.  It was just before they moved to the country that the Graefin said to her girls as they sat at coffee in the dismantled house: 

“You shall have all that I never had, fulfil all the secret ambitions of my younger heart.  If you are individuals, prove it.  You may go on the stage, write, paint, study law, medicine, what you will.  You have been bred aristocrats and aristocrats you will remain.  It is not liberty that vulgarizes.  Don’t hate men.  They have charming phases and moods; but avoid entangling alliances until you are thirty.  After that you will know them well enough to avoid that fatal initial submergence.  The whole point is to begin with your eyes open and your campaign clearly thought out.