at eight, there being at the
table, besides the Countess, a daughter and her companion, a
Frenchwoman. During dinner the Countess mentioned that the war
necessitated frequent readjustments in the management of her estates;
that the military authorities had recently taken another five hundred
of her men for service in the army. She asked me if I enjoyed hunting
and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, said that she would send me
for an hour or two with the pheasants in the morning. She warned me
that the shooting would be poor because no care had been taken of the
preserves since her sons departed for the war.

* * * * *

_Bekescsaba, Tuesday, January 5th._ I was awakened at nine by a valet
who came in, opened the blinds, shut the windows, brought the
breakfast specified by me last night, and assisted me to bathe and
dress.

At ten I paid my regards to the Countess and then the chasseur-en-chef
who was to take me for the morning's sport was presented to me. I
climbed into a shooting wagon, which then drove across fields some
twenty minutes to a woody country. I was provided with two beautiful
little English "16-bore," one of which was carried by a loader who
walked always behind my right elbow. The game was pheasants,
partridges, and hares, the latter perfectly enormous, being thirty
inches long when held up by the feet. While hunting I was followed at
a respectful distance by the shooting wagon in which I was expected to
ride when going farther than fifty yards, and by another wagon which
was to carry the game I was expected to kill. The game was all natural
wild game, not the domesticated kind of the English system. The
chasseur had with him a dozen peasant boys as beaters. I "walked up"
and "flushed" game myself, except when there was a particularly good
bit of cover; then I was conducted ahead with many bows to a
well-selected spot, whereupon the beaters in a line began at a
distance of a hundred yards and "worked through," knocking their
sticks together, a process that several times resulted in my being
absolutely overrun by a burst of pheasants flushing from all
directions, flying at all heights and angles and traveling like
bullets. In two hours I killed seventy-three pheasants and partridges
and twenty-three hares, and this in spite of the fact that my shooting
was erratic. Thus at one spot I killed eight pheasants with as many
shells without changing my feet (it was there th