The baron paused, filled his glass, and drank the wine slowly, fixing his eyes on the tablecloth like a person whose thoughts are completely preoccupied with some recollection.
"Well," said Oswald, "how was that?"
"What?" said the baron, as if awakening from a dream; "oh yes; well, you shall hear what I had to do with gypsies in Hungary."
"I presume that was a romance?"
"Of course," replied the baron; "I was at that time at an age when every man is more or less romantic, unless he be born a mere stick. I was enthusiastic about moonlit magic nights, about wells and forest noises, and, above all, I was enthusiastic about slender maidens, with or without a guitar and a blue ribbon.
"All my views of life were eminently romantic, especially my morality. The whole of life had no more meaning for me than a puppet-show at a fair, and sovereign irony was the only real feeling which I appreciated. In a word, I was a nice fellow, and if they had hung me on the nearest gallows it would have been my just punishment, and, I trust, a good warning for others.
"I was heartily tired of my student's life at Bonn and at Heidelberg. I had looked in vain into a thousand books to solve the mystery about which so many better men have racked their brains, and I wanted to try it in a new way. I wrote to my guardian, and conveyed to him my intention to travel a few years. My guardian approved the plan, as he approved everything I ever suggested,--so he could get rid of me for a time,--he sent me money and letters of introduction, and I went on my journey. I travelled over Southern Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. But if you were to ask me even for a superficial account of my journey I would be seriously embarrassed. I know as much of those countries as of the landscapes I have seen in my dreams. Last, I went to Hungary. Chance, which was always my only guide, had led me there. In Vienna I had become acquainted with a Hungarian nobleman, whose father owned large estates at the foot of the Tetra mountains. He had invited me to visit him, and I went. We led quite an idyllic life; the main features of which were wine, women, and dice. He had a couple of beautiful sisters, with whom I fell in love one by one. Then I became enthusiastic about the French dame de compagnie of his mother, who had just come from Paris and put all the young Hungarian ladies to shame by the grace of her manners, her taste in matters of toilette, and her skill in conversation.
"Once I was roaming about in the forest, my mind full of this sweet goddess, whom I then believed in as I did in genuine pearls and real gold, but whom I afterwards met again in Paris under different circumstances; I was dreaming, and thus lost myself, or was led by my guide, Chance, to a clearing which a band of gypsies had chosen for their temporary encampment. A few small huts built of clay and wickerwork in very archaic style, a fireplace over which an old dame was roasting a stone-martin, deerskins and rags hanging on the branches to dry--this was the picture which suddenly met my eye. The whole band was away with the exception of the old witch, a few little babies who rolled about in the sand in paradisiac nakedness, and one young girl of about fifteen--"
The baron filled his glass and drank it at one gulp.
"Of about fifteen--perhaps she was older--it is difficult to determine the age of gypsy girls. She was slender and agile like a deer, and her dark eyes shone with such a magic, supernatural fire, that I was seized by a rapture of delight as I looked deeper and deeper into them, while she was telling me my fortune by reading the lines in my hand. My fate could be read much more clearly in her eyes than in my hand. I was delighted, enraptured, beside myself--the world had disappeared in an instant. You must bear in mind that I was twenty years old, and romantic as few men are, even at that early age; but I felt that to be a gypsy, to feed upon stone-martins, and to sun one's self in the eyes of a gypsy girl was the true and only purpose of life upon earth. I stayed with the gypsies I know not how many days. My friends at the château thought I had been torn by wolves. But one evening, when the sun had already disappeared behind the mountain wall which protected our encampment towards the north, and while the band were still away, I was sitting with the Zingarella at the foot of an old oak-tree, and was happy in my young love--when----