uld take it so
seriously, but so it is."

"From whom did you hear all this, from the baroness?"

"No--from Hatszegi."

An idea suddenly flashed through Gerzson's brain.

"Did you speak to the baroness herself?"

"No. I only saw her through the carriage window when they drove away."

"Was she veiled?"

"No, my friend. It was her very self I assure you."

"Thank you. And now, if you like, you can go on amusing yourself at my
expense. Adieu!"

Only when he had got home and flung himself on the sofa in a state of
stupor, did he begin to reflect a little calmly on what he had heard.
There was so much about the affair that was startling and
incomprehensible, true and untrue, probable, incredible, shameful and
exasperating, that he could make neither head nor tail of it.

That the baroness _had_ returned must be true, for they all maintained
that she had come back while he was lying drunk. It is true that he had
got drunk, but he had no recollection of having been quarrelsome and
misbehaving himself. Strain his memory as he might, all he could call to
mind was Henrietta, with her angelically gentle face, sitting before him
at the table and telling him the legends of the Transylvanian Alps--all
the rest was a blank.

Up he jumped at last and began pacing up and down the room. At last,
after much reflection, his mind was made up, he had formed a plan.

"I'll be off. I'll be off immediately. I'll go straight to her. I am
determined to learn from her own lips exactly what happened to me and
how I came to make such a fool of myself. I will speak to her myself."

And immediately he ordered his coachman to put the horses to; but he
told not a living soul whither he was going, even to the coachman he
only mentioned the first stage.

At a little booth at the end of the town he bought four and twenty
double rolls and a new wooden field flask. When they came to the River
Maros, he descended to the water's edge, rinsed out his flask at least
twice and then filled it with water, finally thrusting both the rolls
and the flask into his travelling knapsack. After that he drew on his
mantle, clambered up into the back part of the coach, stuck his pipe in
his mouth and his pistol in his fist and never closed an eye till
morning.

And it must be admitted that Mr. Gerzson's mode of travelling on this
occasion was decidedly eccentric. On reaching a village he would tell
his coachman where to go next but he never told him more th