bedroom, which in many ways was delightful, was reached by a vaulted
passage so cold and draughty that the Princess advised me always to wear
my hat when I traversed it. There was not a bell in the house, and, if I
had not had my own servant with me, who was placed in a room near mine,
I should have been helpless. And yet the doors of this dwelling were
guarded by a porter in crimson robes, who wielded a staff of office
topped by a prince's coronet. Most of the dishes at dinner might have
come from some rough farmhouse, but the pastry could hardly have been
equaled by the finest _chef_ in Paris, while the walls of the circular
dining room were daubed with theatrical pillars, so that it looked like
a ruined temple on the stage of some company of strolling players in a
barn.

Other contrasts and other notable things I discovered as the days went
by. The whole of the lower portion of one side of the house was a museum
of family archives, many of them going back to the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and most of the attic floor--a kind of museum
likewise--was crowded with precious spoils taken by the Batthyanys from
the Turks--jeweled swords and muskets, horsecloths sewn with emeralds,
and pavilions, still splendid, which once had sheltered Pashas in the
field. Another curiosity was a theater still displaying the scenery
which had been painted for some private performance before the end of
the eighteenth century.

During the first week of my visit the Princess and I were alone, and
considerately for most of the day she left me to my own devices. I had
brought out with me to Cannes a diary of my life in Cyprus, and,
inspired by my present surroundings, I set myself to begin a task which
more than once I had contemplated--the task of working my notes into a
small coherent book. I very soon found this pursuit absorbing, and my
hostess realized that my entertainment would be far from burdensome to
herself. Meanwhile when we were together I was never weary of
questioning her with regard to Hungarian life. She told me all sorts of
quaint and curious things. She told me of robbers who still haunted the
forests--of forest gypsies whose lives were a mixture of theft and
music, and who often twanged their instruments in a tavern near the
castle gates. She told me of former Batthyanys and of other castles once
possessed by them. She told me how the latest alterations of Koermend had
been made to satisfy the whims of a beautiful