If I lean far out of the window I can see the Countess on her private terrace each dawn. She stands and sit en négligé, nervous and ungraceful, answering her mail as she fills a giant tumbler with slugs of Noilly Prat. From eleven to eleven-thirty she vocalizes, and practices scales on her violin, which sounds I remember hearing with fascination fourteen years ago when she was maybe sixty (it was she was first "sang" for me Poulenc's Le Disparu). Sympathique. She loves, needs music, even if undiscerningly. But who'd have believed that Lily tippled? She who for ages kept Boris Kochno on a leash. << less