"So ever since then I have been the lady Elizabeth."
With these words Bessy rushed to the edge of the steep rock, crossed her two hands over her breast, and looked over her shoulder at me.
"I have now told you everything, and you must judge me. You have no need to push me. Give but a signal with your finger and I'll put an end to myself!"
Horrified, I grasped her hand, and snatched her away from the dizzying rocky ledge.
"Do not tempt God! Be reasonable!" And, not without some little force, I made her sit down by the hot embers.
"But do you call this life?"
"Come, come, calm yourself! Look, these armed men are close upon us!"
They were not gendarmes. They were two worthy foresters belonging to the domain of the Forests of Diosgyör—a grey-bearded old man with a youthful assistant.
No hostile intentions had brought them thither. They could see, too, that our picnic beside the fire was a very innocent diversion. In the album left upon the rock was my unfinished landscape.
They greeted us cordially, and I returned their greeting in like manner. I asked the elder man whether I was injuring any one's proprietorial rights by making a fire with other people's wood. If so, I said, I would make good the trespass. To which the old man replied that he had no quarrel with me on that score. The stuff was there for the poor man to gather, and he cited the classical German ballad in which the evil-minded forester robbed the peasant of his bundle of faggots. He must needs be a lover of letters, then!