Three ladies belonging to that class of society which
has nothing useful to do, and therefore does not know
how to employ its time sensibly, were sitting on a
bench in the shade of some pine trees at Ischl, and
were talking incidentally of their preference for
all sorts of smells.
One of the ladies, Princess F——,
a slim, handsome brunette, declared there was nothing
like the smell of Russian leather; she wore dull brown
Russian leather boots, a Russian leather dress suspender,
to keep her petticoats out of the dirt and dust, a
Russian leather belt which spanned her wasp-like waist,
carried a Russian leather purse, and even wore a brooch
and bracelet of gilt Russian leather; people declared
that her bedroom was papered with Russian leather,
and that her lover was obliged to wear high Russian
leather boots and tight breeches, but that on the
other hand, her husband was excused from wearing anything
at all in Russian leather.
Countess H——, a very stout lady,
who had formerly been very beautiful and of a very
loving nature, but loving after the fashion of her
time a la Parthenia and Griseldis, could not
get over the vulgar taste of the young Princess.
All she cared for was the smell of hay, and she it
was who brought the scent New Mown Hay into
fashion. Her ideal was a freshly mown field in
the moonlight, and when she rolled slowly along, she
looked like a moving haystack, and exhaled an odor
of hay all about her.
The third lady’s taste was even more peculiar
than Countess H——’s, and more
vulgar than the Princess’s, for the small, delicate,
light-haired Countess W—— lived
only for—the smell of stables. Her
friends could absolutely not understand this; the
Princess raised her beautiful, full arm with its broad
bracelet to her Grecian nose and inhaled the sweet
smell of the Russian leather, while the sentimental
hay-rick exclaimed over and over again:
“How dreadful! What dost thou say to it,
chaste moon?”
The delicate little Countess seemed very much embarrassed
at the effect that her confession had had, and tried
to justify her taste.
“Prince T—— told me that that
smell had quite bewitched him once,” she said;
“it was in a Jewish town in Gallicia, where he
was quartered once with his hussar regiment, and a
number of poor, ragged circus riders, with half-starved
horses came from Russia and put up a circus with a
few poles and some rags of canvas, and the Prince
went to see them, and found a woman among them, who
was neither young nor beautiful, but bold and impudent;
and the impudent woman wore a faded, bright red jacket,
trimmed with old, shabby, imitation ermine, and that
jacket stank of the stable, as the Prince expressed
it, and she bewitched him with that odor, so that
every time that the shameless wretch lay in his arms,
and laughed impudently, and smelled abominably of
the stable, he felt as if he were magnetized.
