And so in Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_ I had found just the opposite of what I sought. And yet I counted what I found as all pure gain. I felt myself elevated by it, enlightened, pacified. Once I tried to talk with my father about this point of view that I had just attained, but in vain. He would not follow me up the mountain, _i.e._, he would not read the book, and so it was to no purpose to talk with him of things which one could only see from the top of it.
Now followed the year--my second phase--in which mourning turned into melancholy. I now read and studied with even greater assiduity. This first work of Buckle had given me an appetite for reflection, and given me an inkling of an enlarged view of the world. I wanted now to enjoy this yet more and more; and therefore I followed this book up with a great many more conceived in the same spirit. And the interest, the enjoyment, which I found in these studies helped me to pass into the third phase, _i.e._, to cause the disappearance of my melancholy. But when the last change was wrought in me, _i.e._, when my joy in life awoke again, then all at once books contented me no longer, then I saw all at once that ethnography and anthropology, comparative mythology, and all the other ’ologies and ’graphies were insufficient to set my longings at rest, that for a young woman in my position, life had other flowers of bliss all ready, and for which I had only to stretch my hand out. And so it came about that in the winter of 1863 I offered myself to introduce my younger sisters into the world and opened my saloons to Vienna society.
“Martha, Countess Dotzky, a rich young widow.” It was under this promising title that I had to play my part in the comedy of the “great world”. And I must say that the character suited me. It is no slight pleasure to get greetings from all sides, to be _fêted_, spoiled, on all hands, and overwhelmed with distinctions. It is no slight enjoyment, after nearly four years’ separation from the world, to come all at once into a whirlpool of all sorts of pleasures, to make the acquaintance of interesting and influential persons, to be present at some splendid entertainment almost every day, and when there to feel yourself the centre of universal attention.