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قراءة كتاب Countess Erika's Apprenticeship
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Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=1hUtAAAAYAAJ
MRS. A. L. WISTER'SPopular Translations from the German.12mo. Attractively Bound in Cloth."O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" By Ossip Schubin. $1.25 ERLACH COURT. By Ossip Schubin. 1.25 THE ALPINE FAY. By E. Werner. 1.25 THE OWL'S NEST. By E. Marlitt. 1.25 PICKED UP IN THE STREETS. By H. Schobert. 1.25 SAINT MICHAEL. By E. Werner. 1.25 VIOLETTA. By Ursula Zöge von Manteuffel. 1.25 THE LADY WITH THE RUBIES. By E. Marlitt. 1.25 VAIN FOREBODINGS. By E. Oswald. 1.25 A PENNILESS GIRL. By W. Heimburg. 1.25 QUICKSANDS. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50 BANNED AND BLESSED. By E. Werner. 1.50 A NOBLE NAME. By Claire von Glümer 1.50 FROM HAND TO HAND. By Golo Raimund 1.50 SEVERA. By E. Hartner 1.50 THE EICHHOFS. By Moritz von Reichenbach. 1.50 A NEW RACE. By Golo Raimund. 1.25 CASTLE HOHENWALD. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50 MARGARETHE. By E. Juncker. 1.50 TOO RICH. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50 A FAMILY FEUD. By Ludwig Harder. 1.25 THE GREEN GATE. By Ernst Wichert. 1.50 ONLY A GIRL. By Wilhelmina von Hillern. 1.50 WHY DID HE NOT DIE? By Ad. von Volckhausen. 1.50 HULDA; or, The Deliverer. By F. Lewald. 1.50 THE BAILIFF'S MAID. By E. Marlitt 1.25 IN THE SCHILLINGSCOURT. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 AT THE COUNCILLOR'S. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 THE SECOND WIFE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 THE OLD MAM'SELLE'S SECRET. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 GOLD ELSIE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 COUNTESS GISELA. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 THE LITTLE MOORLAND PRINCESS. By E. Marlitt. 1.50 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
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COUNTESS ERIKA'S
APPRENTICESHIP
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
OF
OSSIP SCHUBIN
AUTHOR OF "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" ETC.
BY
MRS. A. L. WISTER
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1891
Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company
All rights reserved.
Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.
Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.
Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what American art and American literature have done and are doing for the directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of character and inner sensations.
The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an electric shock.
We Old World folk take life, to a certain degree, more at our leisure, but nevertheless every real artist follows the great direction that has seized all our contemporary being.
Directness of truth, vividness and intensity of presentation, exact rendering of impression, are the means by which we seek to produce life; life itself is the object, but I am afraid that to the end the life-giving spark will defy analysis.
Let me hope that the figures whose woes and weal my reader will follow through these pages may be half as alive to him as they have been to me; and let me hope, likewise, that when he closes the volume we may have become fast friends.
I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking Mrs. Wister most heartily for her faithful and picturesque rendering of my story.
What a rare delight it is to an author to find himself so admirably rendered and so perfectly understood only those can feel that have undergone the acute misery of seeing their every thought mangled, their every sentence massacred, as common translations will mangle and massacre word and thought.
Therefore let every writer thank Providence, if he find an artist like Mrs. Wister willing to put herself to the trouble of following his intentions, and of clothing his ideas in so brilliant a garb.
It is only natural, therefore, that, having been lucky enough to find so rare a translator, I should authorize the translation to the absolute exclusion of any other.
So, hoping it may find favour in the eyes of my transatlantic readers, I should like to shake hands with them at parting and say good-bye with the Old World saw, "Auf Wiedersehen."
Ossip Schubin.
COUNTESS ERIKA'S
APPRENTICESHIP.
CHAPTER I.
Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room, recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by the natural result.
He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at peace.
This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.
His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her husband's brilliant scheme.
"It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances," sighed the Baron when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.
It was near the end of August, and the asters