Boutique [antikvár]

CHAPTER I How shall I start my story? I will begin with the question "When was I born?" Actually, Linda, when I was as old as you are today; all of eighteen years. It was the mid nineteen twenties. I was standing in the middle of Paris, on the Avenue Wagram in front of a Boutique. It was lunchtime and I saw, saw for the first time in my life what it was that I was looking for: flowers, colours, good taste, like a beautiful melody which your ears hear for the first time and you would like to hum forever. There, in front of the display in the window, I reaUsed I had found that which I'd been searching for and this stayed with me for the whole of my life. Today I know that it isn't the good taste and the atmosphere of the fashion boutique, as I had believed then, but rather tliat harmony of colour and form is the real meaning of art. Linda, you too are blessed with the same artistic spirit and are of our blood; you are endowed with that grace which today, in my seventieth year, makes my life bearable. It is the Art that colours my world and makes everything beautiful around me. It is irrelevant whether it will be houses, theatre costumes or stage decorations that you will design. But I have no worries on your behalf, you'll do what you find appealing because you inherited from your beautiful mother, my only darling daughter, your ambition, talent, conscientiousness and your strong will. it « What happened in the previous 18 years of my life is of little account. I was the second of three daughters of a Hungarian headmaster to a country school. The least significant, or rather