favourite, and
the sworn comrade of every gentleman who lived in the neighbourhood.
Nay, even when the Hungarian Diet assembled at Pressburg in 1823, and
Master Jock, with great reluctance, forsook his dogs, his cronies, his
zanies, his heydukes, and peasant-wenches, in order to attend to his
legislative duties, he could not find it in his heart to part with Mike,
so he took the lad along with him to Pressburg. This, however, may only
have been part of the joke. How comical it would be, for instance, to
introduce the pseudonymous young gentleman to the various noblemen and
gentlemen assembled there! Nay, better still, some young countess or
other might fall over head and ears in love with the handsome youth,
and what a capital jest it would then be to exhibit the fellow in the
scarlet livery of a heyduke, whose duty it is to climb up behind the
carriage when his master goes out for a drive!

So Michael Kis made his appearance in the midst of the elegant society
of Pressburg, and his merry humour and handsome, manly figure, backed up
by the best letters of introduction, made him a general favourite.
Polite society had a peculiar phraseology in those days. Rudeness used
to be called frankness; bad language, originality; violence, manliness;
and frivolity, nonchalance. To Mike, therefore, was attributed a whole
host of good qualities, and the only alteration required of him was that
he should wear an _attila_ instead of a _mente_. He was a gentleman by
birth, and that was enough. Every one admired, not his mind,
indeed--they troubled themselves very little about that in those
days--but his manly bearing, his rosy cheeks, his muscular figure, his
sparkling eyes, his black moustache, which are of far more account than
any amount of learning. And all the while Master Jock was laughing in
his sleeve, for the red Whitsun Day was drawing near, and most of the
young noblemen were hail-fellow-well-met with Mike Kis; and here and
there you might even hear dear, thoughtful mammas making inquiries about
the circumstances of the fine young fellow whom they were by no means
indisposed to see hovering around their darling daughters; nay, more
than one of them confided in a whisper to her bosom friends that she had
good cause to suspect that the fine young fellow in question had serious
intentions.

Such secrets have a way of spreading like wildfire, and old Karpathy
began to suffer from the drollest paroxysms. Sometimes, in the gravest