"She's exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she's
studied Kaulbach," said a diplomatic attache in the group round
the ambassador's wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."

"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can
possibly say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced,
flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old
silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity
and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed _enfant terrible_.
Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups,
and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one
and then of the other. "Three people have used that very phrase
about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made
a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that remark
so."

The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new
subject had to be thought of again.

"Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful," said the
ambassador's wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant
conversation called by the English, _small talk_. She addressed
the attache, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.

"They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing
that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get
me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given
me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the
celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so
stale..."