"What has the coachman to do with me, I should like to know?"
Here I thought it my duty to intervene.
"Countess, ma déesse, this is no joke. This comes, you see, of nocturnal excursions. Here we are camping out in the middle of a forest, and the robbers who abound in this forest will come and take our horses, our money, and our lives. I only wish I had a revolver."
But the little demon only laughed, and, before I could prevent it, she had opened the coach door and leaped out.
"Oh! what a splendid night. How fragrant the forest is; how the glow-worms sparkle in the grass. Have you no eyes, Baron?"
Eyes, indeed! when I couldn't see three paces before me for the darkness.
"But surely I see something shining through the trees over there," she continued.
My blood grew cold within me. We were approaching some robbers' den evidently.
The coachman answered the question from his box with the voice of a man who is already being throttled.
"That, your ladyship, is the pot-house which the country people call the 'guest-detaining csárdá.'"[9]