e Bank discount goes daily
higher. I am obliged to you for your interesting remarks on ethnology,
though I am low-minded enough to own, I could have read with more
pleasure whether the floods in the Drave have interfered with the rafts,
and also whether these late rains have damaged the newly sown crops.

"If you choose to see Pesth and Buda, you will have time, for Count
Hunyadi will not be at his chateau till nigh Christmas; but it is
important you should see him immediately on his arrival, for his
intendant writes to say that the Graf has invited a large party of
friends to pass the festival with him, and will not attend to any
business matters while they remain. Promptitude will be therefore
needful. I have nothing to add to your instructions already given.
Although I have not been able to consult my father, whose weakness is
daily greater, I may say that you are empowered to make a compromise, if
such should seem advisable, and your drafts shall be duly honored, if,
time pressing, you are not in a position to acquaint us with details.

"The weather here is fine now. I passed yesterday at Abazzia, and the
place was looking well. I believe the Archduke will purchase it, and,
though sorry on some accounts, I shall be glad on the whole.

"For Hodnig and Oppovich,

"Sara Oppovich.

"Of course, if Count Hunyadi will not transact business on his arrival,
you will have to await his convenience. Perhaps the interval could be
profitably passed in Transylvania, where, it is said, the oak-bark is
both cheap and good. See to this, if opportunity serves. Bieli's book
and maps are worth consulting."

If I read this epistle once, I read it fifty times, but I will not
pretend to say with what strange emotions. All the dry reference to
business I could bear well enough, but the little passing sneer at what
she called my ethnology piqued me painfully. Why should she have taken
such pains to tell me that nothing that did not lend itself to gain
could have any interest for her? or was it to say that these topics
alone were what should be discussed between us? Was it to recall me to
my station, to make me remember in what relation I stood to her, she
wrote thus? These were not the nature I had read of in Balzac! the
creatures all passion and soul and sentiment,--women whose atmosphere
was positive enchantment, and whose least glance or word or gesture
would inflame the heart to very madness; and yet was it net in Sara to
become a