nsequence, carried away but a faint idea of its real
captivation, could have witnessed our performance; and some even began
to plot how such a representation could be prepared for her Majesty's
next visit to Hungary. While they thus talked, supper was announced;
and as the company were marshalling themselves into the order to move
forward, I took the opportunity to slip away unnoticed to my room, well
remembering that my presence there was the result of accident, and that
nothing but a generous courtesy could regard me as a guest.

I had not been many minutes in my room when I heard a footstep in the
corridor. I turned the key in my lock, and put out my light.

"Herr Englaender! Herr Englaender!" cried a servant's voice, as a sharp
knocking shook the door. I made no reply, and he retreated.

It was clear to me that an invitation had been sent after me; and this
thought filled the measure of my self-gratulation, and I drew nigh my
fire, to sit and weave the pleasant-est fancies that had crossed my mind
for many a long day.

I waited for some time, sitting by the firelight, and then relit my
lamp. I had a long letter to write to Mademoiselle Sara; for up to then
I had said nothing of my arrival, nor given any account of the Schloss
Hunyadi.

Had my task been simply to record my life and my impressions of those
around me at Hunyadi, nothing could well have been much easier. My
few days there had been actually crammed with those small and pleasant
incidents which tell well in gossiping correspondence. It was all, too,
so strange, so novel, so picturesque, that, to make an effective tableau
of such a life, was merely to draw on memory.

There was a barbaric grandeur, on the whole, in the vast building;
its crowds of followers, its hordes of retainers who came and went,
apparently at no bidding but their own; in the ceaseless tide of
travellers who, hospited for the night, went their way on the morrow, no
more impressed by the hospitality, to all seeming, than by a thing
they had their own valid right to. Details there were of neglect and
savagery, that even an humble household might have been ashamed of,
but these were lost--submerged, as it were--in that ocean of boundless
extravagance and cost, and speedily lost sight of.

It was now my task to tell Sara all this, colored by the light--a warm
light, too--of my own enjoyment of it. I pictured the place as I saw
it on the night I came, and told how I could not imagine