"She had a fright. She is of the house of Keystut.... Oh, there are no _mésalliances_ in this house. We descend from the Gédymin.... Well, Professor, two or three days after her marriage, which took place in the castle where we are dining (I drink to your health ...), the Count, the father of the present one, went out hunting. Our Lithuanian ladies are regular amazons, you know. The Countess accompanied him to the hunt.... She stayed behind, or got in advance of the huntsmen,... I do not know which,... when, all at once, the Count saw the Countess's little Cossack, a lad of twelve or fourteen, come up at full gallop. "'Master!' he said, 'a bear has carried off the Countess.' "'Where?' cried the Count. "'Over there,' replied the boy-Cossack. "All the hunt ran towards the spot he pointed out, but no Countess was to be seen. Her strangled horse lay on one side, and on the other her lambs-wool cloak. They searched and beat the wood on all sides. At last a huntsman cried out, 'There is the bear!' and, sure enough, the bear crossed a clearing, dragging the Countess, no doubt for the purpose of devouring her undisturbed, into a thicket, for these beasts are great gourmands; they like to dine at ease, as the monks. Married but a couple of days, the Count was most chivalrous. He tried to fling himself upon the bear, hunting knife in his fist; but, my dear sir, a Lithuanian bear does not let himself be run through like a stag. By good fortune the Count's gun-bearer, a queer, low fellow, so drunk that morning as to be unable to tell a rabbit from a hare, fired his rifle, more than a hundred paces off, without taking care whether the bullet hit the beast or the lady...." "And he killed the bear?"