On the third day, quite early in the morning, they crossed the
Transylvanian frontier. The whole of that splendid region seemed to
smile, but the faces of its inhabitants are sad and mysterious.
Henrietta had a peculiar sense of anxiety during her stay among these
angry looking people who spoke a language she had never heard before. At
intervals of a mile all along the road a roughly carved cross shot up,
covered with clumsily carved letters, which did not in the least
resemble those we are accustomed to. Clementina once asked the coachman
what these crosses might mean and repented doing so immediately
afterwards, for he informed her that they marked the places where
unlucky travellers had come by an untimely death; the inscriptions were
the records of the tragic romances through the scene of which they were
passing.
The valleys grew narrower and narrower, the road wound upward among
precipices, and the loquacious coachman attached horrible stories to
every rock and ruin. Each valley seemed to have its own particular
ghost.
Here and there by the roadside stood silent houses not one of which had
an inviting appearance, it would never have occurred to a human soul to
knock at any of them, even at midnight, to ask for a night's lodging.
They were all of them sooty dilapidated shanties, which might easily
have been taken for stables, consisting of a single room in which the
whole family lived, livestock and all.
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