r, you will not mind
bad cookery. This hall, you see, was once a chapel, in old times, when
the counts were Catholic; it was then left some time to dust and ruin,
until at last Count Henry, our Count Ernest's father, had the altar,
the benches, and the pictures taken away, and an eating room arranged.
You can still see the niche for the choristers over there, where the
floor is raised and boarded. That is the master's table, at which Count
Henry used to sup all his life, with the officials about the place--the
steward, the forester, and the castellan, (not Monsieur Pierre then),
and the bailiff; and at this stone table I supped with the servants; we
had crowds of them then. We never spoke a word, and the count seldom
asked a question. When he had company staying with him, the table was
laid upstairs in the great saloon, as it always was at dinner, when he
dined with the countess. I will just light this candelabrum on the
master's table; who knows whether I shall live to see it lighted
again?"

She placed a heavy five-branched candelabrum of massive silver on the
table, which she had laid with a snow-white damask cloth, and shortly
after, a supper was served up, that might have been far more frugal
still, to appear excellent after my long wanderings. Whilst I ate and
drank, the old lady disappeared, and left me to my meditations. The men
were already gone. I looked up into a twilight depth of desert space,
broken by a few tall pointed windows, through which the moonbeams fell.
The cross-vaults of the ceiling were supported by square pillars,
fretted all over with antlers; and the same ornament was placed at
regular intervals along the walls, with a small tablet under each,
recording the date of the shot, and the name of the shooter. What
changes had the world not seen, from the days when the first high mass
was celebrated here, to the present evening, when a stranger sits alone
at a deserted table, counting these dust-worn trophies! I took the
candelabrum to light myself along while I went reading the names on the
little tablets, reaching about two centuries back.

Counts, and princes, and princely prelates; even a few highborn dames
had been pleased to immortalize their luck. Presently I came to a
well-known name, beneath a stately antler of fourteen:

"On the 20th of September, Count Ernest shot this mighty stag, (who
numbers as many antlers as the young count years,) in the glade by the
deer's drought; Anno Domini