French mistress whom a
Batthyany had brought there from the court of Louis Quatorze. Sometimes
she asked to dinner a priest and also one of the agents called Molna, in
whom she reposed great confidence. When I was talking with the agent the
Princess played the part of interpreter. The priest and I took refuge in
bad Latin. I copied his pronunciation, and we both of us threw
Ciceronian language to the winds. On the whole we were mutually
intelligible, and we differed so favorably from the talkers of the
fashionable world that we both of us meant a great deal more than we
said. One of the questions as to which I was most anxious for
information was whether there were in the neighborhood any other old
castles, a visit to which I might find interesting. Neither the
Princess, the priest, nor the agent on the spur of the moment had very
much to tell me. At all events I found out presently for myself much
more than they could tell me.

Adjoining the dining room was a small oval library, the contents of
which the Princess had, oddly enough, never been at the trouble of
examining. I found that they consisted largely of magnificent French
folios, consecrated entirely to descriptions and elaborate engravings of
court life in Paris as it was under Louis Quinze--of royal balls, of
banquets and garden fetes, and of the chief hotels in the Faubourg--not
only of their architecture, but of their furniture also, and even of the
manner in which the furniture was arranged. Of these pictures some of
the most curious were those which represented balls or other great
entertainments as they would have appeared to the spectator had the
facades of the buildings in which they took place been removed, and the
halls, rooms, and even the servants' staircases been revealed in
section, like the rooms in a doll's house when the hinged front swings
open. In one compartment kitchen boys would be carrying up dishes from
below to magnificent footmen on a landing. In another some powdered
lady, close to the dividing wall, would be offering her eyes and patches
to the homage of some powdered beau. With pictures such as these last
the Princess was specially pleased. I brought a number of the great
volumes into the drawing-room, and we spent in examining them many
pleasant evenings.

But I presently found in the library one which, much humbler in
appearance, was to myself of much more immediate interest. It was
smaller in size, and its binding was stained a