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"That's splendid," exclaimed Béla, with ostentatious gaiety. "Here's Irma néni trying to teach me something about girls. As if I didn't know about them all that there is to know. Eh, Andor, you agree with me, don't you?" he added, turning to the other man. "We men know more about women's moods and little tempers than their own mothers do. What? Now, Irma néni, take your daughter into the house. There is a clatter of dishes and bottles going on inside there which is very pleasant to the stomach. Miss Klara, will you honour me by accepting my arm? Friends, come in all, will you? All those, I mean, whom my wife that is to be has invited to her last girlhood's entertainment. Irma néni, do lead the way. Elsa looks quite pale for want of food she had her breakfast very early, I suppose, and got tired dressing for this great occasion. Andor, you shall sit next to Elsa if you like. .
He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed, a short, sarcastic, almost cruel laugh. "Perhaps not," he said. "But I want her for my wife all the same." "Only because she is the noted beauty of the countryside, and because half the village wanted her." "Precisely," he said with a sneer; "there was a good deal of bidding for Elsa, eh, Irma néni? So you elected to give her to the highest bidder."
As the young Count was saying to me only last night, 'You will give Irma néni and little Elsa vast pleasure by your presence at the child's maiden's farewell, and mind you wear that lovely hat which I admire so much. So affable, the young Count, is he not? He told me that nothing would do but when I get married he must come himself to every feast in connection with my wedding."
"Don't waste your breath, Irma néni," he said roughly. "Even if Elsa were to come and beg my pardon now I would not remain here. I don't care for such tardy, perfunctory obedience, and this she will learn by and by. For to-night, if you and she feel ashamed and uncomfortable, well! so much the better. Village gossip doesn't affect me in the least.
Elsa never disliked him, she accepted his attentions just as she did those of everyone else. Periodically Béla would make a formal proposal of marriage, which Irma néni, in her own name and that of Elsa's paralytic father, invariably accepted. But to his sober and well-worded proposals Elsa gave the same replies that she gave to her more impetuous adorers. "I don't want to marry. Not yet!"
Then he threw his head back and began to talk still more arrogantly and defiantly than he had done hitherto. "Forty-eight oxen," he said, "shall fetch her in six carts! Aye! even though she has not one stick of furniture wherewith to endow her future husband. Forty-eight oxen, I tell you, Irma néni! Never has there been such a procession seen in Marosfalva!
The Empress, convinced of the innocence of Marie Antoinette, directed the Baron de Neni to solicit the recall of the Prince de Rohan, and to inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs of all the motives which made her require it; but the House of Rohan interposed between its protege and the Austrian envoy, and an evasive answer merely was given.
Garrick, Count Neni, a Flemish Nobleman of great rank and fortune, to whom Garrick talked of Abel Drugger as a small part; and related, with pleasant vanity, that a Frenchman who had seen him in one of his low characters, exclaimed, 'Comment! je ne le crois pas.
The Baron de Neni, after having devoted sufficient time and intelligence to the subject, undeceived his sovereign as to the exaggerations of the French ambassador; and the Empress had no difficulty in detecting, among the calumnies which he had conveyed to her under the specious excuse of anxiety for her august daughter, proofs of the enmity of a, party which had never approved of the alliance of the House of Bourbon with her own.
She would feel a little humiliated at first, perhaps, but she would come to me, if you would let her go. I can deal with Irma néni after that. If you will release Elsa yourself of her promise she would come to me, I know." Béla looked for awhile in silence at the earnest face of the other man, then he burst into a loud, mocking laugh. "You are mad," he said, "or else drunk."
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