y do you put all these questions?

_Hungarian_. Because the water is said to make people handsome, and,
above all, to restore to the aged the beauty of their youth. Well!
Tekeli was my countryman, and I have the honour of having some of the
blood of the Tekelis in my veins, but with respect to the queen, pardon
me if I tell you that she was not a Hungarian; she was a Pole--Ersebet by
name, daughter of Vladislaus Locticus, King of Poland; she was the fourth
spouse of Caroly the Second, King of the Magyar country, who married her
in the year 1320. She was a great woman and celebrated politician,
though at present chiefly known by her water.

_Myself_. How came she to invent it?

_Hungarian_. If her own account may be believed, she did not invent it.
After her death, as I have read in Florentius of Buda, there was found a
statement of the manner in which she came by it, written in her own hand,
on a fly-leaf of her breviary, to the following effect: Being afflicted
with a grievous disorder at the age of seventy-two, she received the
medicine which was called her water, from an old hermit whom she never
saw before or afterwards; it not only cured her, but restored to her all
her former beauty, so that the King of Poland fell in love with her, and
made her an offer of marriage, which she refused for the glory of God,
from whose holy angel she believed she had received the water. The
receipt for making it and directions for using it, were also found on the
fly-leaf. The principal component parts were burnt wine and rosemary,
passed through an alembic; a drachm of it was to be taken once a week,
'etelbenn vagy italbann,' in the food or the drink, early in the morning,
and the cheeks were to be moistened with it every day. The effects,
according to the statement, were wonderful--and perhaps they were upon
the queen; but whether the water has been equally efficacious on other
people, is a point which I cannot determine. I should wish to see some
old woman who has been restored to youthful beauty by the use of L'eau de
la Reine d'Hongrie.

_Myself_. Perhaps, if you did, the old gentlewoman would hardly be so
ingenuous as the queen. But who are the Hungarians--descendants of
Attila and his people?

The Hungarian shook his head, and gave me to understand that he did not
believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his people,
though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila
and