who had a clean face or a whole coat, but I
never saw men more courteous to a stranger
than those long-haired, shabbily-clad Poles, and
they appeared to receive their master's guest as
if he were a benefactor of their own.

I was shown into a large saloon, the decorations
of which must once have been splendid
enough. But the mirrors were dimmed and
cracked, the marbles chipped, the gilding dull,
and cobwebs clung to the cornices, which had
been handsomely carved in the old French
style. The furniture was ludicrously scanty,
according to the ordinary European standard,
but everything told of decay, and it was evident
that the castle had been a magnificent residence
some eighty or ninety years ago.

There was no lack of guests. The great room
was filled with company, and I remarked that
almost every one present had handsome features,
and a bearing at once gentle and spirited, that
contrasted forcibly with the usual inmates of a
St. Petersburg drawing-room, its flat-faced men
and sallow dames. Most of those I saw wore
the picturesque Polish dress, richly embroidered,
and the amaranth velvet of the pelisses matched
well with the dark hair and pale keen features
of the wearers.

The count, who was much the junior of his
sister, Princess Anna, received me with much
cordiality, and presented me to his three sons
and his daughter, Rosalie Szomyzy. I had just
time to see that the latter was a most beautiful
dark-eyed girl, well meriting her aunt's eulogies,
when I was put under the care of my host's
valet, and hurried off to dress for dinner, which
was nearly ready.

"Where on earth are you taking me? This
is some one else's room!" I ventured to
remonstrate, as I was ushered into a long low room,
uncarpeted, but provided with five or six beds,
and where sabres and pelisses, cloaks,
saddlebags, and riding gear, lay strewed in heaps.

"Pardon, excellent sir," said the grinning
valet, as he bowed in deprecation of my remark
—"a thousand excuses! This is the apartment
of the bachelor lords."

And, to my surprise, I found that the
arrangements of a Polish household are in some
respects copied from those of the neighbouring
Turks, and that the "selamlik," or men's
apartment, is a time-honoured Sarmatian institution.
However, I had little time to meditate, but,
making a hasty toilet, reached the saloon just
before the horn sounded for dinner.

During the long and plentiful, if ill-served
meal, there was conversation enough, but it was
mostly in Polish, or in the colloquial Latin
which the natives of Poland and Hungary or
the higher classes of them speak with as much
rapid fluency as their own tongues. To judge
by the tones of the speakers, the talk was rather
sad than gay, and by the constant recurrence of
the words "Warsaw" and "Moskov," I gleaned
that the state of siege was frequently
mentioned. I saw visible signs of emotion, quivering
nostrils, eyes bright with anger or scorn, and
heard more than one gentle voice tremble,
though not with fear, in uttering the hateful
name of the Russian oppressor.

Whenever I spoke, either in French or German,
I received a courteous reply, and the old
count and one of his sons frequently and politely
addressed me; but I felt somehow that there
was a freemasonry among the company from
which I was excluded. They were kind and
affable, but I was not one of themselves, and
they were too deeply interested in one subject to
have ears and tongues for casual conversation.

"A political gathering!" said I to myself,
and felt somewhat uncomfortable. My favour
at head-quarters depended, I well knew, on my
keeping up a strict neutrality, and I congratulated
myself that my stay under Count Szomyzy's
roof would be but brief. And yet, with all my
prudence, I could not but sympathise with the
gallant high-spirited men and graceful women around
me, and I sighed as I remembered the melancholy
failure that had for many years attended every
effort of a race so gifted and so unfortunate.

After the heady Hungarian wine had been
succeeded by coffee, we all rose from table, and
returned to the saloon into which I had first
entered, and where a band of motley musicians
had already begun to tune their instruments.
Often as I had heard of the passionate Polish
taste for music and dancing, I had never till
then realised the eager delight with which those
present took their places, whirling round in the
quick movements of the dance as if bewitched
by the tune. Polkas and mazurkas, the national
dances, and the wild, swift Magyar waltz, kept
us all well employed. The woes of Poland were
forgotten for a time, I believe, in the physical
toil and excitement of the scene, and the flashing
eyes and flushed cheeks of those around
me told how dear the amusement was to their
nervous and energetic natures.

The ball had gone on above an hour, and I,
as a stranger, had twice had the honour of
giving my hand to Rosalie Szomyzy. It was
during a pause in the exciting Magyar waltz,
as we stood together under a huge battered
picture in a frame of dimmed gold, and whose
subject was Watteau's version of Arcadia, with
hooped and highly-rouged shepherdesses, that
the count passed, and whispered something to
his daughter. I saw the beautiful girl's flushed
cheek grow suddenly pale, and then redden
again, as she asked me, with some embarrassment,
"Whether her aunt Sobieski had not—
had not requested me to deliver some trifle a
present — on her part to Rosalie Szomyzy?"

The question was a very natural one; the
only puzzle to me was the evident and
apparently causeless emotion of the fair speaker.
Nieces might be very fond of their aunts, but
why they should be thus agitated at receiving
a token of their affection, was incomprehensible.

"Certainly," said I, with a smile; "not that
I am the bearer of any remarkable treasure. A
roll of music, on which the princess seemed to
set great store—"

I broke off abruptly, for at that moment a
faint, far-distant sound, hardly audible to the