'I am always cruel to poachers. And to shoot a vulture in the month of May!'
[CHAPTER II.]
The dining-hall was a vast chamber, panelled and ceiled with oak. In the centre of the panels were emblazoned shields bearing the arms of the Szalras, and of the families with which they had intermarried; the long lancet windows had been painted by no less a hand than that of Jacob of Ulm; the knights' stalls which ran round the hall were the elaborate carving of Georges Syrlin; and old gorgeous banners dropped down above them, heavy with broideries and bullion.
There were upper servants in black clothes with knee breeches, and a dozen lacqueys in crimson and gold liveries, ranged about the table. In many ways there were a carelessness and ease in the household which always seemed lamentable to the Princess Ottilie, but in matters of etiquette the great household was ruled like a small court; and when sovereigns became guests there little in the order of the day needed change at Hohenszalras.
The castle was half fortress, half palace; a noble and solemn place, which had seen many centuries of warfare, of splendour, and of alternate war and joy. Strangers used to Paris gilding, to Italian sunlight, to English country-houses, found it too severe, too august, too dark, and too stern in its majesty, and were awed by it. But she who had loved it and played in it in infancy changed nothing there, but cherished it as it had come to her; and it was in all much the same as it had been in the days of Henry the Lion, from its Gothic Silber-kapelle, that was like an ivory and jewelled casket set in dusky silver, to its immense Rittersäal, with a hundred knights in full armour standing down it, as the bronze figures stand round Maximilian's empty tomb in Tirol. There are many such noble places hidden away in the deep forests and the mountain glens of Maximilian's empire.
In this hall there were some fifteen persons standing. They were the priest, the doctor, the high steward, the almoner, some dames de compagnie, and some poor ladies, widows or spinsters, who subsisted on the charities of Hohenszalras. The two noble ladies bowed to them all and said a few kind words; then passed on and seated themselves at their own table, whilst these other persons took their seats noiselessly at a longer table, behind a low screen of carved oak.
The lords of Hohenszalras had always thus adhered to the old feudal habit of dining in public, and in royal fashion, thus.
The Countess Wanda and her aunt spoke little; the one was thinking of many other things than of the food brought to her, the other was enjoying to the uttermost each bouchée, each relevée, each morsel of quail, each mouthful of wine-stewed trout, each succulent truffle, and each rich drop of crown Tokaï.
The repast was long, and to one of them extremely tedious; but these formal and prolonged ceremonials had been the habit of her house, and Wanda von Szalras carefully observed all hereditary usage and custom. When her aunt had eaten her last fruit, and she herself had broken her last biscuit between the dogs, they rose, one glad that the most tiresome, and the other regretful that the most pleasant, hour of the uneventful day was over.