dy is one the most beautiful creatures I ever saw--and quite
young."

Every eye was turned toward the speaker.

"What? Audiat? How dares he say such a thing?" demanded the
vice-palatine.

"Because I have seen her."

"You have seen her? When did you see her? Where did you see her--her
whom no one yet has seen?"

"When I was returning from college last year, _per pedes apostolorum_,
for my money had given out, and my knapsack was empty. I was picking
hazelnuts from the bushes in the park of the Nameless Castle, when I
heard a window open. I looked up, and saw in the open sash a face the
like of which I have never seen, even in a picture."

"Ah!" ejaculated the baroness. "Tell us what is she like. Come nearer to
me."

The clerk, however, was too bashful to leave his place, whereupon the
baroness rose and took a seat by his side.

"She has long, curling black hair," he went on. "Her face is fair as a
lily and red as a rose, her brow pure and high, with no sign of the
branding-iron. Her mouth is small and delicate. Indeed, her entire
appearance that day was like that of an angel looking down from heaven."

"Is she a maid or a married woman?" inquired one of the company.

A maid, in those days, was very easily distinguished from her married
sister. The latter was never seen without a cap.

"A young girl not more than fifteen, I should say," was the reply. "A
cap would not suit her face."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Bernat bacsi. "And this enchanting fairy opened
the window to show her lovely face to Audiat!"

"No; she did not open the window on my account," retorted the young man,
"but for the beasts that were luckier than I--for four cats that were
playing in the gutter of the roof; a white one, a black one, a yellow
one, and a gray one; and all of them scampered toward her when they
heard her call."

"The cats are her only companions--that much we know from the servants,"
affirmed the justice.

The laurels which his clerk had won made the vice-palatine jealous.

"Audiat," he said, in a reproving tone, "you ought to learn that a young
person should speak only when spoken to; indeed,--as the learned
Professor Hatvani says,--even then it is not necessary to answer all
questions."

But the company around the dinner-table did not share these views. The
clerk was assailed on all sides--very much as would have been an
aeronaut who had just alighted from a montgolfier--to relate all that he
had seen in those regio