at this time, when only six hundred families
were proprietors of six thousand acres of Hungarian soil, the nobles
of Great Britain possessing not more than five thousand in England. The
Prince of Lichtenstein entertained for a week the Emperor of Austria,
his staff and his army. Old Ferency Zilah would have done as much if
he had not always cherished a profound, glowing, militant hatred of
Austria: never had the family of the magnate submitted to Germany,
become the master, any more than it had bent the knee in former times to
the conquering Turk.

From his ancestors Prince Andras inherited, therefore, superb
liberality, with a fortune greatly diminished by all sorts of losses
and misfortunes--half of it confiscated by Austria in 1849, and enormous
sums expended for the national cause, Hungarian emigrants and proscribed
compatriots. Zilah nevertheless remained very rich, and was an imposing
figure in Paris, where, some years before, after long journeyings, he
had taken up his abode.

The little fete given for his friends on board the Parisian steamer
was a trifling matter to the descendant of the magnificent Magyars; but
still there was a certain charm about the affair, and it was a pleasure
for the Prince to see upon the garden-like deck the amusing, frivolous,
elegant society, which was the one he mingled with, but which he towered
above from the height of his great intelligence, his conscience, and
his convictions. It was a mixed and bizarre society, of different
nationalities; an assemblage of exotic personages, such as are met
with only in Paris in certain peculiar places where aristocracy touches
Bohemianism, and nobles mingle with quasi-adventurers; a kaleidoscopic
society, grafting its vices upon Parisian follies, coming to inhale
the aroma and absorb the poison of Paris, adding thereto strange
intoxications, and forming, in the immense agglomeration of the old
French city, a sort of peculiar syndicate, an odd colony, which belongs
to Paris, but which, however, has nothing of Paris about it except its
eccentricities, which drive post-haste through life, fill the little
journals with its great follies, is found and found again wherever Paris
overflows--at Dieppe, Trouville, Vichy, Cauteret, upon the sands of
Etretat, under the orange-trees of Nice, or about the gaming tables of
Monaco, according to the hour, season, and fashion.

This was the sort of assemblage which, powdered, perfumed, exquisitely
dressed, i