"Has your sister never found a balm for her wounded affections?"
"Never. My people are of the kind that loves but once."
"Pray tell me where it is that your people have their home," urged the princess. "Is it on an island in the moon?"
"Indeed, princess, it is not unlike those glimpses of the moon that we get through a large telescope when we examine, for instance, the rocky island known to astronomers as 'Plutarch,' or that named 'Copernicus.' Everything where I live would seem to you to savour of another planet. On the maps the place is put down as 'Toroczko.' It is in a mountain gorge, entered by a narrow path along the riverside and through a cleft in the rocks. The northern side of this narrow ravine, being in some measure exposed to the southern sun, is clothed with woods; the southern is a great wall of bare rock rising in terraces, or giant steps, that might well suggest the dreariness and desolation of a landscape in the moon. This barren expanse of naked rock is called the Szekler Stone, and was formerly surmounted by the castle of a Hungarian vice-voivode. Its ruins are still to be seen there. The lower slopes of this mountainside are cultivated now, and the ploughshare is gradually forcing one terrace after another to yield sustenance to the farmer. Thus it is that by these cultivated terraces the centuries of the town's history can be numbered. For there is a village there, deep down in the rocky ravine, as if on the floor of a volcano's crater, and in that village live the happiest people in all the world. Do not think me unduly prejudiced by the fact that I am one of them. No, I am not prejudiced. Strangers also find no terms of praise too high for those happy and industrious people. Noted English and German travellers have visited my native valley and afterward written books about it, as other travellers have about Japan or Circassia. Indeed, those two countries have something in common with my own. My people have developed and perfected industries peculiar to themselves, as have the Japanese, and they also are proud of their handsome women, as are the Circassians—except that the girls of Toroczko are not for sale, nor, for that matter, are they to be had by foreigners, even for love. Their charms bloom only for their own countrymen, and by them they are jealously guarded. They never work in the fields, and so their fair faces are never tanned or freckled. The young maidens keep their rooms, and spin, weave, and embroider for their own adornment. When Sunday comes and they all go to church, they fill six benches and form a veritable 'book of beauties,' of various types, both blond and brunette, which, however, one cannot so easily distinguish, owing to the richly worked kerchiefs under which their hair is hidden. Their entire costume is snow-white, even to the fine sheepskin bodice worn by each."
"Ah, your young women think of nothing but dress, I fear," remarked Blanka.
"By no means," protested Manasseh; "on the contrary, their childhood and youth are largely devoted to education. The people of our little valley maintain a high school for boys and a seminary for girls, as well as a charity school for the poor."
"Then your people must be rich."
"No, not rich. There are no lords or ladies among them, and they have suffered more from the ravages of war than any other community in Hungary."
"But how," asked Blanka, "can they afford to dress their young women in silks and laces, and give both boys and girls an education? They must have some fairy talisman for conjuring wealth out of the rocks on which their houses stand."
"And so they have. Their talisman is industry, and out of their rocky soil they conjure riches in the shape of iron,—the best that can be found in all Transylvania. The same men that fill the church every Sunday, in holiday attire, dig and delve under ground the remaining six days of the week. Another secret of their modest wealth is their abstinence from strong drink. There is not a single grog-shop in Toroczko. But I fear I am wearying you."