eet
leaves whitened with cream.

After the cold dish came crabs, chickens, and asparagus, along with
glasses of Malaga and of Hungarian wine; all ate, drank, and were silent.
Probably never since the time when the walls of this castle were erected,
which had generously entertained so many noble gentlemen, and had heard
and echoed so many vivats, had there been memory of so gloomy a supper.
The great, empty hall of the castle echoed only the popping of corks and
the clink of plates; you would have said that some evil spirit had tied up
the lips of the guests.

Many were the causes of this silence. The sportsmen had returned from the
forest talkative enough, but when their ardour had cooled, and they
thought over the hunt, they realised that they had come out of it with no
great glory: was it necessary that a monkish cowl, bobbing up from God
knows where, like Philip from the hemp,91 should give a lesson to all the
huntsmen of the district? O shame! What would they say of this in Oszmiana
and Lida, which for ages had been rivals of their own district for the
supremacy in woodcrafts? So they were thinking this over.

But the Assessor and the Notary, besides their mutual grudges, had on
their minds the recent shame of their greyhounds. Before their eyes
hovered a rascally hare, leaping nimbly about and bobbing its little tail
from the wood's edge, in mockery of them; with this tail it beat upon
their hearts as with a scourge: so they sat with faces bent over their
plates. But the Assessor had still more recent reasons for chagrin, when
he gazed at Telimena and at his rivals.

Telimena was sitting half turned away from Thaddeus, and in her confusion
hardly dared to glance at him; she wanted to amuse the gloomy Count, and
to make him talk more freely, so as to get him into better humour; for the
Count was strangely glum when he returned from his walk, or rather, as
Thaddeus thought, from his ambuscade. While listening to Telimena he
raised his brow haughtily, frowned, and looked at her almost with
contempt; then he sat down as near Zosia as he could, filled her glass,
and passed plates to her, saying a thousand polite things, and bowing and
smiling; sometimes he rolled his eyes and sighed deeply. It was evident,
however, despite such skilful deception, that he was flirting merely to
spite Telimena; for every time that he turned his head away, apparently by
accident, his threatening eye glittered upon Telimena.

Telimena