basket, empty and overturned, was still poised upon the
leaves and tossing amid the green waves.

An instant later all was silent and deserted; the Count fixed his eyes on
the house and strained his ears; still he mused, and still the huntsmen
stood motionless behind him.--Then in the quiet deserted house arose first
a murmur, then an uproar and merry cries, as in an empty hive when bees
fly back into it: that was a sign that the guests had returned from
hunting, and that the servants were busying themselves with breakfast.

Through all the rooms there reigned a mighty bustle; they were carrying
about platters, plates of food and bottles; the men, just as they had come
in, in their green suits, walked about the rooms with plates and glasses,
and ate and drank; or, leaning against the window casements, they talked
of guns, hounds, and hares. The Chamberlain and his family and the Judge
were seated at the table; in a corner the young ladies whispered together;
there was no such order as is observed at dinners and suppers. In this
old-fashioned Polish household this was a new custom; at breakfasts the
Judge, though loth, permitted such disorder, but he did not commend it.

There were likewise different dishes for the ladies and for the gentlemen.
Here they carried around trays with an entire coffee service, immense
trays, charmingly painted with flowers, and on them fragrant, smoking tin
pots, and golden cups of Dresden china, and with each cup a tiny little
jug of cream. In no other country is there such coffee as in Poland. In
Poland, in a respectable household, a special woman is, by ancient custom,
charged with the preparation of coffee. She is called the coffee-maker;
she brings from the city, or gets from the river barges,42 berries of the
finest sort, and she knows secret ways of preparing the drink, which is
black as coal, transparent as amber, fragrant as mocha, and thick as
honey. Everybody knows how necessary for coffee is good cream: in the
country this is not hard to get; for the coffee-maker, early in the day,
after setting her pots on the fire, visits the dairy, and with her own
hands lightly skims the fresh flower of the milk into a separate little
jug for each cup, that each of them may be dressed in its separate little
cap.

The older ladies had risen earlier and had already drunk their coffee; now
they had had made for them a second dish, of warm beer, whitened with
cream, in which swam curds cut into