herd of
chargers across the steppe. All are white as silver; they have fallen into
confusion; suddenly masts grow from their necks, and from their manes
broad sails; the herd changes into a ship, and majestically floats slowly
and quietly across the blue plain of the skies!"

The Count and Telimena looked up; Thaddeus with one hand pointed out a
cloud to them, while with the other he squeezed Telimena's dainty fingers.
The quiet scene lasted for several minutes; the Count spread a sheet of
paper on his hat and took out his pencil; then, unwelcome to their ears,
the house bell resounded, and straightway the quiet wood was full of cries
and uproar.

The Count, nodding his head, said in an impressive tone:--

"Thus fate is wont to end all in this world by the sound of a bell. The
calculations of mighty minds, the plans of imagination, the sports of
innocence, the joys of friendship, the outpourings of feeling hearts! when
the bronze roars from afar all is confused, shattered, perturbed--and
vanishes!"

Then, turning a feeling glance on Telimena, he added, "What remains?" and
she said to him, "Remembrance"; and, desiring somewhat to relieve the
Count's sadness, she gave him a forget-me-not that she had plucked. The
Count kissed it and pinned it on his bosom. Thaddeus on the other side
separated the branches of a shrub, seeing that through the greenery
something white was stealing towards him. This was a little hand white as
a lily; he seized it, kissed it, and silently buried his lips in it as a
bee in the cup of a lily. On his lips he felt something cold; he found a
key and a bit of white paper curled up in the hole of it; this was a
little note. He seized it and hid it in his pocket; he did not know what
the key meant, but that little white note would explain.

The bell still pealed, and, as an echo, from the depths of the quiet woods
there resounded a thousand cries and shouts; this was the uproar of people
searching for one another and calling, the signal that the
mushroom-gathering was over for the day: the uproar was not at all gloomy
or funereal, as it had seemed to the Count, but a dinner uproar.57 Every
noon this bell, calling from the gable, invited the guests and servants
home to dinner; such had been the custom on many old estates, and in the
Judge's house it had been preserved. So from the wood there came a throng
carrying boxes, and baskets, and handkerchiefs with their ends tied up--all
full of mushroom