mental hay-rick exclaimed
over and over again:

"How dreadful! What dost thou say to it, chaste moon?"

The delicate little Countess seemed very much embarrassed at the effect
that her confession had had, and tried to justify her taste.

"Prince T---- told me that that smell had quite bewitched him once," she
said; "it was in a Jewish town in Gallicia, where he was quartered once
with his hussar regiment, and a number of poor, ragged circus riders,
with half-starved horses came from Russia and put up a circus with a few
poles and some rags of canvas, and the Prince went to see them, and
found a woman among them, who was neither young nor beautiful, but bold
and impudent; and the impudent woman wore a faded, bright red jacket,
trimmed with old, shabby, imitation ermine, and that jacket stank of the
stable, as the Prince expressed it, and she bewitched him with that
odor, so that every time that the shameless wretch lay in his arms, and
laughed impudently, and smelled abominably of the stable, he felt as if
he were magnetized.

"How disgusting!" both the other ladies said, and involuntarily held
their noses.

"What dost thou say to it, chaste moon?" the haystack said with a
sigh, and the little light-haired Countess was abashed and held her
tongue.

At the beginning of the winter season the three friends were together
again in the gay, imperial city on the blue Danube. One morning the
Princess accidentally met the enthusiast for the hay at the house of the
little light-haired Countess, and the two ladies were obliged to go
after her to her private riding-school, where she was taking her daily
lesson. As soon as she saw them, she came up, and beckoned her
riding-master to her to help her out of the saddle. He was a young man
of extremely good and athletic build, which was set off by his tight
breeches and his short velvet coat, and he ran up and took his lovely
burden into his arms with visible pleasure, to help her off the quiet,
perfectly broken horse.

When the ladies looked at the handsome, vigorous man, it was quite
enough to explain their little friend's predilection for the smell of a
stable, but when the latter saw their looks, she blushed up to the roots
of her hair, and her only way out of the difficulty was to order the
riding-master, in a very authoritative manner, to take the horse back to
the stable. He merely bowed, with an indescribable smile, and obeyed
her.

A few months afterwards, Viennese so