That the baroness _had_ returned must be true, for they all maintained
that she had come back while he was lying drunk. It is true that he had
got drunk, but he had no recollection of having been quarrelsome and
misbehaving himself. Strain his memory as he might, all he could call to
mind was Henrietta, with her angelically gentle face, sitting before him
at the table and telling him the legends of the Transylvanian Alps--all
the rest was a blank.
Up he jumped at last and began pacing up and down the room. At last,
after much reflection, his mind was made up, he had formed a plan.
"I'll be off. I'll be off immediately. I'll go straight to her. I am
determined to learn from her own lips exactly what happened to me and
how I came to make such a fool of myself. I will speak to her myself."
And immediately he ordered his coachman to put the horses to; but he
told not a living soul whither he was going, even to the coachman he
only mentioned the first stage.
At a little booth at the end of the town he bought four and twenty
double rolls and a new wooden field flask. When they came to the River
Maros, he descended to the water's edge, rinsed out his flask at least
twice and then filled it with water, finally thrusting both the rolls
and the flask into his travelling knapsack. After that he drew on his
mantle, clambered up into the back part of the coach, stuck his pipe in
his mouth and his pistol in his fist and never closed an eye till
morning.
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