The
young wife learnt to know the gentry and magnates of Transylvania face
to face, and it was no wonder if she quickly accommodated herself to her
new surroundings and began to be reconciled to her fate. She felt like
one who, after seeing a landscape by moonlight and thinking it highly
crude, sees it again by the light of day and finds it quite different.
And now the autumn came, the season when men prepare and congregate
together for dangerous hunting expeditions. Bears and boars are now the
only topics. For a week beforehand the women cannot get a word out of
the gentlemen, they herd together in the armoury and talk of nothing but
guns and dogs, firing each other by recounting their past exploits,
making bets, and playing at cards. The ladies at such times are shelved
altogether.
During the actual hunting season the men are not to be seen for whole
weeks at a time, but off they go to the woods and stalk or lurk for
their prey in the midst of water and ice, and the ladies think it
nothing extraordinary if their husbands or lovers, as the case may be,
come back, or are carried back, drenched with rain, invisible for mud,
with their garments torn to shreds and their limbs mangled; for after
all it is the only manly diversion--the only diversion really fit for a
gentleman.
When the bear-hunting began, that heroic cripple, Squire Gerzson, also
appeared with Count Kengyelesy and numerous other familiar faces from
distant counties, who had all met together on the day after Henrietta's
wedding, and who regularly made Hidvar their autumn trysting-place.
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