m an old hermit whom she never
saw before or afterwards; it not only cured her, but restored to her all
her former beauty, so that the king of Poland fell in love with her, and
made her an offer of marriage which she refused for the glory of God,
from whose holy angel she believed she had received the water. The
receipt for making it and directions for using it were also found on the
fly-leaf. The principal component parts were burnt wine and rosemary,
passed through an alembic; a drachm of it was to be taken once a week,
"etelbenn vagy italbann," in the food or the drink, early in the morning,
and the cheeks were to be moistened with it every day. The effects,
according to the statement, were wonderful--and perhaps they were upon
the queen; but whether the water has been equally efficacious on other
people, is a point which I cannot determine. I should wish to see some
old woman who has been restored to youthful beauty by the use of L'eau de
la Reine d'Hongrie.

_Myself_. Perhaps, if you did, the old gentlewoman would hardly be so
ingenuous as the queen. But who are the Hungarians--descendants of
Attila and his people?

The Hungarian shook his head, and gave me to understand that he did not
believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his people,
though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila
and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious
manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that
the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in
the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which,
in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his
birth, having dreamt that the child with which she was _enceinte_ would
be the father of a long succession of kings, which, in fact, was the
case; that after beating the Russians he entered Hungary, and coming to a
place called Ungvar, from which many people believe that modern Hungary
derived its name, he captured it, and held in it a grand festival, which
lasted four days, at the end of which time he resigned the leadership of
the Magyars to his son Arpad. This Arpad and his Magyars utterly subdued
Pannonia--that is, Hungary and Transylvania, wresting the government of
it from the Sclavonian tribes who inhabited it, and settling down amongst
them as conquerors! After giving me this information, the Hungarian
exclaimed with much an