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By Root 615 0

how true it was. The much-used leather-patched breeches and the boots which had been impregnated with horse-sweat passed without notice in the hunting field; but in the scented ballroom they reeked of horse; and for Isti the effect was awful. Wherever he went everyone fled from him, and it was the same the whole evening. No girl would let him come near her, or dance with her; and most of the men, in true Transylvanian fashion, started to tease and mock him, making elaborate gestures of disgust while muttering ‘stink of the stables, stink of the stables, stink of the stables’. For as long as he could bear it poor Isti wandered about alone, chased away from every corner, feeling lonely and persecuted, as indeed he was. Finally, after a long battle with himself, he admitted defeat, renounced all effort at cutting a dash at the ball and took refuge in the card-room where the clouds of cigar-smoke that hung over the gaming-tables obliterated all lesser odours. Here, at last unnoticed and unsmelt, Isti collapsed into a chair, and nobody bothered him any more.

As soon as poor Isti had fled, order returned to the ballroom. More pretty women kept on arriving, their heads covered with odalisques’ veils or bull-fighters’ hats. If they had come escorted by husbands, brothers or fathers these last went to stand with the other men at the side of the room while the lady, all self-congratulatory smiles, paraded the length of the room so as to show off her miraculous and completely original head-dress. Sometimes it would happen, as she glided down the centre of the room, that an ironic whisper, none too discreet, would be heard. ‘Do look! That’s the third tulip!’ or, when a white-powdered wig went bobbing by, ‘Just like a poodle!’. More rarely there was heard a soft murmur of pleasure and approval. This happened when Dodo entered bearing the towering feather crown of an Indian chief, and when the pretty little Mrs Fischer arrived with a complete circus carousel on her head on which the little wooden horses went round and round whenever she gave them a touch with her fingers. It was the same when Margit appeared. She still looked as girlish as always even though at the end of January she had given birth to a fat healthy boy, the first grandchild for old Count Adam Alvinczy. In her simple white dress covered in tiny embroidered flowers she looked like a girl at her first ball. On her head she wore a plain red kerchief completely covering her hair and tied just as young peasant girls did in the country. It could not have cost more than twenty cents, but it was tied so skilfully, with two corners erect at the back of her head, and it was so well-suited to her calm brown face, lifted chin and proud dignified walk, that when she went up to the Patronesses and sank into a deep curtsy, everyone was captivated by her charm and grace and applauded loudly. Margit herself blushed with pleasure and stepped modestly aside.

When almost everyone was there and the Garazda Boy was standing by the Patronesses, looking at his watch and wondering if he ought to get the first csardas started, there was a stir at the head of the stairs and Adrienne swept into the room.

There was such a mob of people round the entrance that until she arrived in the central aisle she could hardly be seen. Then the dense phalanx of men in their black evening dress parted in the centre and Adrienne stood in full view. For a moment she stood there without moving and then slowly with long strides started to walk down the hall.

Adrienne’s dress was black and very long. It was made of some smooth material covered with tiny shiny metallic paillettes which shimmered and rustled with every movement she made. It was as if she were covered from neck to floor with some magic snake’s armour. Her head was held high and on it she wore a wide oriental golden crown as seen in pictures of the Manchu empresses. It was made up of branches of golden flowers bent upwards in wide arcs the tips of which had been decorated with hanging fringes of tiny gem stones. The hearts of all the flowers