II
THE COMPULSORY DIVERSION—AN OLD BARON'S YARN
I wonder, my dear fellows, if any of you know the Countess Stephen Repey, the younger one I mean, not the old lady, that little Creole princess—my little black-eyed cobold, as I call her? Mine indeed, pish! I don't mean that, of course. That is only a façon de parler. All of us, my dear fellows, as you very well know, have sighed after her enough, at some time or other, but none of you have had, like me, the luck to travel at night with her in the same coach. Well, naturally, her maid was there too. Still it was a great bit of luck all the same. But no more of such luck for me, thank you.
One day, at her castle of Kérekvár, it suddenly occurred to the Countess, quite late in the evening, that the Casino ball at Arad[8] was coming off on the morrow, and she must be there at all hazards. No sooner said than done. The horses were put to at once, and as there was nobody with her but me, she said: "I pray you, my dear Baron, be so good as to escort me to Arad."
[8] The Cheltenham of Hungary.
Well, when it came to "dear Baron," what on earth could I say? "Countess! ma déesse, it is very dark; we shall only get upset and break our legs, and how can we dance with broken legs? We shall have to cross the three Körös rivers, the bridge over one of them is sure to be crazy as usual, and in we shall plump. Then at Szalenta we shall have to pass through the deuce of a wood, full of robbers, and I shall never be able to defend you single-handed against the whole lot of them. And besides, what need is there to hurry? Early to-morrow morning, after a nice cup of tea, you have only to step into your carriage, your four bay horses will fly with us to Arad, and by the evening you will be quite ready with your toilet."
That's what I said, but you know how it always is, try and persuade a woman not to do a thing, and she'll insist on doing it all the more. She didn't want to drive her horses to death, she said, and whoever heard of wanting to rest after a short journey like that. Besides, she loved so to travel by night. What with the stars and the frogs, it was so beautiful, so romantic, and much more such stuff. But bless you, that was a mere pretext. The fact was, she had suddenly got the idea into her darling little noddle, and nothing in heaven or earth could turn her from her purpose.
Enfin, I was between two stools. I had either to go with her or remain alone in the castle. Of course I chose the former alternative, especially after she gave me permission to sit opposite to her in the coach.
I enjoyed myself splendidly, I can tell you. The Countess, by degrees, absolutely loaded me with her favours. First of all she put her handbag in my lap, to which she presently added a muff; next she hung a reticule upon my arm; finally she entrusted to me a couple of band-boxes, after that she fell asleep. I could have asked anything I liked of her, especially when the coach stumbled and she awoke in terror and began asking for all her belongings one after another, dozing off again when she was quite sure they were all there. Later on, the lady's-maid began to groan: "O Lord! how my head aches!"—whereupon I also pretended to fall asleep.
Suddenly we all started up in alarm, the coach had suddenly moved sideways, and then come to a dead stop as if it had fallen into a ditch.
My Countess also awoke and asked, stupidly, what was the matter.