So beautiful was she that her fame had spread through the
Hungarian plain as far as Arad, and whenever great folks from foreign
lands came to see Gyenstar and Brivadia they would make a long circuit
and come to Vlaskucza in order to rest at the house of old Misule, where
the finest prospect of all was a look into the eyes of Mariora.
"This wonderously beautiful maiden loved the poor goatherd Juon, who
possessed nothing in the world but his sheepskin pelisse and his
alpenstock; him she loved and him alone. Wealthy old Misule would
naturally have nothing to say to such a match; he had in his eye an
influential friend of his, a gentleman and village elder in the county
of Fehervar, one Gligor Tobicza,--to him he meant to give his daughter.
Reports were spread that Juon was a wizard. It was Misule's wife who
fastened this suspicion upon him, because he had succeeded in bewitching
her daughter. She said among other things, that he understood the
language of the brute beasts, that he had often been seen speaking with
wolves and bears, and that when he spread out his shaggy sheepskin, he
sat down at one end of it and a bear at the other. There was this much
of truth in the tale, that once when he was tending his flocks Juon
heard a painful groaning in the hollow of a rock, and, venturing in,
perceived lying in one corner a she-bear who, mortally injured in some
distant hunt, had contrived to drag its lacerated body hither to die.
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