We are delighted to have our dear friend M. de Schloezer here.  He is Minister to the Vatican, and is (or ought to be) as black as ink, while we Quirinalers are as white as the driven snow; but he has no prejudice as to color, nor have we, so we see one another very often and dine together whenever we can.  As soon as his silver was unpacked we were invited straightway to dinner.  His rooms in the Palazzo Capranica (belonging to the family of Madame Ristori’s husband) are as bare as those he occupied in Washington—­barer, even, for here there are no portieres.  In the salon he had his beloved Steinway grand, one stiff sofa, four enormous fauteuils, destined for his cardinals, a few small gilt chaises volantes (as he calls little chairs that are easy to move about), one table on which reposes the last piece of marble picked up while strolling in the Forum, and, as a supreme banality, his niece’s Christmas present, a lamp-mat, on which stands the lamp in solitary glory.

Schloezer’s dinners are of the best, and are most amusing.  He superintends everything himself and gives himself no end of trouble.  Each course as it is served receives an introductory speech:  “Ce pate, mon cher, est la gloire de ma cuisiniere” etc.

He says that all volaille ought to be carved at the table, therefore he carves the birds and the chickens himself, brandishing the knife with gusto while sharpening it.

And as for the wines!  Dear me!  After filling his glass he holds it against the light, tastes the wine, smacks his lips, and says:  “Ce vin de Bordeaux est du ’64.  II faut le boire avec recueillement.  Je l’ai debouche moi-meme.”

He has a great liking for Lenbach (the famous painter), although they are utterly different in character and ways.  Lenbach is not musical, and is rather rough and gruff in his manners.  Even his best friends acknowledge that he does not possess the thing called manners.  He is clever and witty in his way, but his way is sarcastic and peevish.  Sometimes when he is talking to you he beams and scowls alternately behind his spectacles.  You think that he is listening to you, but not at all!  He is only thinking out his own thoughts, in which he seems always to be wrapped.

Lenbach occupies the same apartment in the Palazzo Borghese that Pauline Bonaparte lived in.  Probably the very couch is still there on which she reclined for her famous statue.  You remember what a modest lady friend said to her, “Cela m’etonne que vous ayez pu poser comme cela!”—­meaning, without clothes; to which the Princess replied:  “But why do you wonder?  Canova had a fire in the room.”

Lenbach asked permission to paint Nina.  We did not refuse, and expected great things.  He photographed her twenty times in different poses, turning her head (physically, not morally) every which way, and painted thirteen pictures of her, but there was only one (a very pretty profile in crayon with a pink ear and a little dash of yellow on the hair) which he thought good enough to give us.