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Fleischmann was entertaining several art instructors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and half a dozen of the most promising students, an event the Fleischmanns hosted at least twice a year.
    Hanna took wraps and hats at the front entryway as the guests arrived. The first to enter was a handsome man with wavy dark hair and a thick black mustache that curled in such a way as to make him look a bit devilish or at least dangerous. He was followed by a tall, distinguished man with a neatly trimmed goatee, intelligent eyes, a regal posture, and pince-nez glasses, then a younger gent in a tatty coat. A bald man with close-set eyes accompanied a young fellow with greasy hair and a nervous twitch who adjusted his tie as he glanced in the mirror just inside the entryway.
    As they were greeted and welcomed by Herr Fleischmann, Hanna picked out one voice, that of the distinguished guest with the goatee. His tone was deep and melodic with an exotic lilt and such a lovely color of blue. He sounded like a foreign prince, and that is what she called him in her mind—The Prince.
    Herr Fleischmann addressed the man with the thick mustache as Herr von Stuck. The name sounded familiar and Hanna remembered the signature on a painting that had hung in the parlor for several days. She found the painting intriguing in a dark, sinister way. It was done in deep colors, the flesh of a naked woman, her sleek body wrapped in a snake, catching the only light that appeared in the picture. Hanna studied this man carefully now. The man who wrapped a snake around a woman with his brush and paints.
    The Prince was introduced by Herr von Stuck as Wassily Kandinsky. They were led into the dining room. There were no women in attendance at this particular meal, though Hanna thought from the chatter in the kitchen that Frau Fleischmann might appear. She had not yet laid eyes on her.
    As Hanna served the guests, she was in a position to catch bits and pieces of the conversation as she came in and out of the dining room.
    “It was in Moscow at an exhibition of French art,” Prince Kandinsky said, and Hanna’s mind worked quickly, remembering the lessons in geography her mother had taught her. The Prince was Russian, which explained the way he spoke. “The catalogue identified it as a work by the artist Claude Monet, and informed me that it was a haystack.” The others listen with great respect. “Yet I did not recognize it as such. The object itself seemed to be lacking in the painting, and I wondered if the identification of the haystack was essential to the picture.”
    “As long as we have color, Herr Kandinsky is satisfied,” Herr von Stuck observed wryly.
    “But perhaps the forms, the recognizable images, become less important. It was the color, the light, the feelings which drew me inexplicably to this painting,” the Prince replied, as Hanna carefully placed the china plate with the second course before him. He glanced at her and with warm eyes nodded, which gave her a small start, as she had been instructed to become invisible as she served.
    “Herr Kandinsky wishes the painting to be just that—a painting?” Herr von Stuck retorted.
    “It is a concept to consider,” Kandinsky replied.
    The guests stayed long into the evening, talking of Paris, of Vienna, of artists named Gauguin, Seurat, Klimt, and Munch, of a young artist named P. Ruiz Picasso whose work had been chosen for exhibition at the Exposition Universelle in Paris that spring.
    “I like to keep an eye on such artists,” Herr Fleischmann said. His eyes swept over the men at the table, and Hanna wondered if some of these students would become famous, if their work would soon hang in the galleries in Paris, Vienna, and at the Fleischmann Gallery here in Munich. She felt a little prick of excitement along the back of her neck. What fun it would be to get a glimpse into the academy where they were trained, to observe the artists at work and say, Yes, this is the one who will set